


Lessons in Love

by Miss_Peletier



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Abby and Marcus as teachers, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Fluff, Eventual Smut, F/M, Mutual Pining, Teacher AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-08-19 21:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 169,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8225602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Peletier/pseuds/Miss_Peletier
Summary: He's the arrogant asshole Abby can't escape, the man who thinks he's better than everyone because he teaches AP Government and Classic Literature. And Abby's the most infuriating, stubborn science teacher he's ever met, the woman who seems to exist for the sole purpose of making his life difficult. January arrives, winter storms hit, and Arkadia High School will never be the same.





	1. Of Winter Storms and Alcohol

“Ms. Griffin?”

Abby stopped shoving quizzes into her bag just long enough to roll her eyes, to curse her horrible luck. Was it too much to ask, she wondered, for her to get out of the school without running into him again? Why the hell was he here, anyway?

This was what she got for not locking the door to her classroom as soon as the final bell rang. Another visit from Marcus Kane, teacher of Advanced Placement Government and resident hardass.

“Kane, you don’t have to call me that when the kids aren’t around,” she snapped, not bothering to turn around. She didn’t have to see him to know he was wearing his trademark smirk, the left side of his mouth quirked into that arrogant smile that made her blood boil. The little things he did – calling her ‘Ms.’ or ‘Dr.’ Griffin, berating her for letting kids leave her room without hall passes – left her with a bad taste in her mouth as she left after a long day of work, and she vowed to get out of his presence as soon as possible.

“Well, you don’t have to call me ‘Kane,’ either,” he said, and that was the final straw. She zipped her bag with a flourish and threw on her winter coat and scarf, turning to face her visitor in one fluid motion. She’d sooner brave the freezing temperatures than deal with him for even a second longer.

“It suits you,” she said simply, tilting her head to one side and fighting the urge to put her hand on her hip. She remembered that warm August day all too well. Running late to first period, to find Monty Green and Jasper Jordan dancing (yes, _dancing_ ) on lab tables with the rest of her students cheering them on. Kane storming across the hall and slamming her door, red-faced, his frown furrowed enough to silence her classroom full of tenth-graders.

“You’re off to a great start,” he’d muttered as the door crashed to a close, and she hadn’t had a comeback. “Some of us have _teaching_ to do, Ms. Griffin.”

She’d reflected on that moment as she seethed in front of the whiteboard, doing her best to explain the basics of human anatomy while Monty and Jasper made faces at each other from across the room. In time she found her only regret would be not stepping outside her room that day and giving Marcus “I’m so much better than everyone because I teach A.P. Government and Classic Literature” Kane a piece of her mind.

They’d passed the last few months in a similar fashion. Even when her class wasn’t being disruptive, Kane made it his ritual to storm over to her room and slam her door, then storm back to his room full of teenagers. Except, today, the scales had balanced.

For once, she was able to reach his room first in the morning, only a heartbeat after the bell rang to signal the start of class, and shut his door. She spent the rest of first period reveling in the look of shocked awe that crossed his smug (and, she had to admit, attractive-if-he-wasn’t-such-an-ass face). As she walked away, she thought he might have even spilled his coffee.

 _Good,_ she thought as she returned to her classroom, Monty and Jasper and Harper cheering, chanting her name. _It’s time someone gave him a taste of his own medicine._

Was that why he was here? To talk her about this morning? Well, that went both ways. He shouldn’t dish it out if he couldn’t take it. And if she talked to Thelonious about it, she was certain he’d take her side. His morning habit wasn’t just disruptive to her class: it likely had repercussions for Callie Cartwig’s art class and Jacopo Sinclair’s mechanics course as well.

The only reason she hadn’t run to Principal Jaha at the first incident had been because she was thinking of how to get back at him, and today, she’d succeeded.

“Bellamy Blake left his anatomy textbook in my class,” Kane said, holding the 400-page book parallel to the floor and straight out from his body, an invitation to take it off his hands. “I thought you might want it back. As I’ve heard, your kids have a rather large exam coming up. Next Thursday, if I’m not mistaken?”

“They do,” Abby said, closing the distance between them to curl her fingers around the worn cover of the book. When she tried to take it from him, he tightened his grip. _What the hell?_

“I’d been meaning to talk to you about that,” he said. “I’m going to have to ask you to move that test.”

Abby stared up into his brown eyes, biting the inside of her cheek to push a scream into submission.

“I can’t push the test back,” she snapped. Couldn’t Kane’s request wait until Monday? “I’m already behind schedule as it is. Why don’t you move _your_ exam? I’ve heard Clarke complaining about the pressure you put them under.”

“I can’t move my test,” he said. “Doing that would put my students at a disservice when AP exams are given in the spring. Your class is doing nothing but taking their attention away from potential college credit.”

“My class,” Abby snarled, stepping closer so the only thing between the two of them was the length of the textbook, “is teaching them something they’ll actually use. They’re not just taking it to get out of a college course.”

“Please,” he said, leaning closer. “Wishful thinking isn’t good science, Abby. I know enough about your class to know that.”

Her jaw dropped.

“Listen, Kane,” she snarled, shoving the textbook against him until his back was flat against her chipped wooden storage closet. “If you think you can intimidate me into moving my exam date, you can-“

And then, with no fanfare or warning, the lights flickered once and went out completely.

“Shit,” Abby breathed after ten seconds of silence, remembering the winter storm warning that had flickered across her phone earlier that day. When was it supposed to hit? All previous tension evaporated, Abby withdrew the textbook and Marcus let it slip from his grasp. They made their way over the drawn blinds at the far end of her classroom and yanked the string, gazes met with pure white.

“That storm wasn’t supposed to hit for another hour,” Marcus said, staring slack-jawed at the flurry of snowflakes before them. Abby’s parking space was less than twenty feet from the back door of the school, but she couldn’t see it in these conditions.

 _To hell with it,_ she thought, dropping the shades and turning around, leaving him staring at tan metal instead of a snowstorm. _I’ll take my chances._

“Where are you going?” Marcus asked, trailing after her.

“It’s Friday,” she said, picking up her bag and heading for the door. Maybe if she made it out quick enough, the roads wouldn’t be too awful. “I’m leaving for the weekend.”

“Not in this, you’re not,” he said, stepping in front of her and blocking her only exit. There was just enough light to see him by, just enough of a glow from the window to illuminate his expression. She wasn’t trying to attribute any emotion other than his usual detachedness, but might she have seen…concern? “You won’t even make it out of the parking lot. Like it or not, we’re both stuck here.”

 _This is what I get for staying to grade essays instead of going home after school,_ she thought. Clarke would be fine – she’d probably go over to Indra’s and have dinner with Lexa and her family tonight – but God only knew how long she’d be stuck here with only Arkadia High School’s finest Government teacher in the way of companionship.

She groaned, and he gave her a smile that bordered on sympathetic.

“What,” he said, something glinting in his eyes that wasn’t the full-on rage she was used to seeing in the mornings. “Did you have special Friday night plans, Doctor Griffin?”

She fixed him with a glare that could’ve melted the rapidly accumulating snow outside Arkadia’s doors.

“That’s really none of your business, is it?” she said, dropping her bag and rifling through it to reach her phone. Sure enough: a weather alert.

_High accumulation expected. Storm to continue through the night. Travel is not advised. Take precautions._

And a text from Clarke: _Mom, is everything okay????? Lexa and I can come get you. She’s good at driving in the snow._

It took her a few seconds to send an answer: _everything’s fine, honey. Stuck at school until storm ends, please stay inside. Love you, see you as soon as I can._

She couldn’t help noticing Kane wasn’t checking his phone, and wondered if that was a result of stubbornness or loneliness. Certainly there was someone out there who didn’t want him to get trapped in this storm? Someone concerned about his whereabouts, just as Clarke was for hers?

Then she shoved the thought and him aside, striding down the hallway to Jasper Jordan’s locker.

If she was going to be trapped with Marcus Kane overnight at work, the only way she could make it tolerable was to get roaringly, mind-bendingly, uproariously drunk.

 

***

 

And so, a locker’s worth of Budweiser and Smirnoff later, Abby found herself judging a spoken word performed by none other than Marcus Kane himself. As he’d explained in between sips of vodka, he’d been forensics state champion for his high school not once, not twice, but three times in a row.

Abby had no clue what spoken word was – weren’t all words spoken, really? – but he was standing behind the microphone in the English literature class and she was sitting on one of Diana Sydney’s couches, and he was fumbling with some poem by Matthew Arnold about dreams and love and “part my hair, and kiss my brow” and God, the whole room was spinning and poetry had been Jake’s thing, not hers.

And his voice took on a different, lilting, gravelly tone when he was reading, she thought as the wind howled and snow slammed against the wall of windows. He was less harsh when his mouth closed around Atwood’s verses, and his dark hair fell over his forehead in a way that made him seem less like a police officer, a patrolman, and more like a lost soul.

Like a man who didn’t have anyone calling him in the middle of a snowstorm. Like a man who slammed her door every morning not because he didn’t care, but perhaps because he did. Like a man who was always on time because he had nowhere else to be, nowhere else to go, a man whose life consisted of work and little else.

And it had been a year since Jake passed away on a night much like tonight, crashed his car in a snowstorm on his way home from work. It had been a year since the police cars showed up at her door to deliver the news that left her numb, hollowed out, a hole in her heart where her husband’s embrace and “hey honey, how was your day?” should have been.

It had been a year, a damningly long year but the alcohol was helping, and somehow Marcus Kane slamming the door to her classroom and berating her and ordering her to move her exam dates made her feel alive.

“For then the night will more than pay, the hopeless longing of the day,” he finished in that low voice that was making her heart do silly things in her chest, and Abby had half an idea and half a bottle and half her conscience screaming at her that no, this was wrong. This was so, so wrong, and she should derail that train of thought before it reached the station.

“How did I do?” he asked, slurring his words, looking for all the world like a nervous teenager waiting for an evaluation. “Did I qualify for finals?”

She stood up, stumbling a bit as the floor moved underneath her feet and shook like the storm had somehow brought an earthquake upon them, too. But motivation won out over blood alcohol content, and she crashed into him with the force of a slamming door.

“Whoa,” he said. “Careful. I don’t want you to-“ he paused for a hiccup, and Abby registered the word adorable bouncing around somewhere in the back of her head.

“I knew you’d catch me,” she said. “You weren’t going to let me fall.”

His gaze turned serious, and for a moment she wondered if he could possibly still be sober. There was no way, she thought. Not after all they’d found in Monty and Jasper’s lockers.

“I’ll always catch you,” he whispered as she stared at him, wondering how the hell this man was the same man who tormented her for months on end, the same man who crawled underneath her skin and dug his fingers into her and refused to let go. Could they be the same person, exist at the same time? Or were they two parts of a whole, batting for domination over his soul?

Then she stopped wondering and started _doing_.

Her mouth collided with his in a ferocious kiss, knocking him back against one of the other couches and drawing a noise of stunned surprise from his alcohol-soaked lips. He tasted sharp and sweet and bitter all at once, addicting, and she couldn’t get enough as his fingers worked their way underneath her shirt. The school was cold but he was warm: his touch was like an August day, leaving her as warm as that fateful first period when they’d met.

“Marcus,” she sighed as his mouth moved lower, honing in on the hollow of her throat. He had the faintest hint of a beard – a stubble she wouldn’t have registered if not for skin-on-skin contact – and the gentle scratching was enough to bring stars to the corners of her eyes. “God, Marcus.”

“Thought I was-“ he stopped for a moment to nibble the area just above her collarbone, making her flush crimson, “just Kane?”

“No,” she mumbled, her back against the worn cushions, her head against the tattered pillow. “Not anymore. You’re Marcus now.”

Maybe, she thought dimly, he’d always been Marcus. Maybe she just hadn’t been able to see it.

And his kisses were moving lower still as he fumbled with the buttons on her shirt, although she was heartbeats away from just taking the damn thing off. The sensation of his mouth on her breasts was too breathtaking to resist, and she let out a loud moan as his fingers worked their way under her bra, his name, _Marcus, Marcus, Marcus_ …

“Mom _?”_

And suddenly the room was bright and her daughter’s voice was echoing off of every wall inside her head, and she shoved Marcus Kane away with the force of the storm rattling the school’s foundations. When she turned her heavy head toward the source of the noise, she found Clarke and Lexa standing in the doorway wearing expressions of horror and abject disgust.

_Well, shit._

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Marcus stammered as he stumbled to his feet, and suddenly someone was taking a sledgehammer to her head while simultaneously blinding her and making every muscle in her body ache like she’d contracted a fever.

“Sure,” she heard Lexa say, and the next thing she felt were the girls’ arms around her, supporting her.

“Come on, mom,” Clarke said. “Let’s go home.”

She stole one last glance as the girls guided her from the room at the man who knew poetry, the man with a voice like an angel’s song, the man who was both everything she hated and everything she thought, in a drunken haze, she might not be able to live without.

_Kane._

_Marcus._

Maybe, she thought, they were one and the same.


	2. Of Lunch Tables and Fire Alarms

“Guess what?” Octavia Blake said over a mouthful of cafeteria food, daring Jasper to answer with her expression.

“What?” he asked, and she grinned.

“I heard Mrs. Griffin and Mr. Kane hooked up last Friday.”

“Gross,” Jasper said, leaning back in his chair. “How’d you find out?”

“I have sources,” Octavia said. She paused for a moment to check her phone, glanced around the room until she located her brother sitting at a table of seniors. They shared a knowing smile. “And that’s all I’m gonna say about that. But that’s not all on Griffin and Kane.”

“Do tell,” Monty said, shoving a forkful of wheat pasta into his mouth.

“They did it here,” Octavia said, drawing out the last part of her sentence for effect. “In Mr. Miller’s classroom. On the couches.”

A volcano of chocolate milk erupted from Nate Miller’s mouth, and Monty resorted to clapping him on the back to ensure his medical stability.

“In my _dad’s_ room?” Miller said, aghast. The disgusted look on his face – his widened eyes, his slack jaw – drew a manic cackle from Octavia. This was going better than she’d imagined. Jasper, she found, wasn’t fairing much better. His face had gone beet-red: a textbook case, she thought, of secondhand embarrassment.

“Which couch?” he asked. “Do you know which one they…did it on?”

Octavia shrugged. “I’ve heard different things,” she said, relishing the upper hand she had in the conversation. “Seems most likely that it was the one closest to the microphone. The blue, velvety one.”

Monty let out a loud, anguished moan. “Dammit. I sit there for sixth period creative writing.”

Jasper rotated in his cracked plastic chair to punch his friend on the shoulder.

“Maybe Kane’s luck will rub off on you,” he goaded with a smirk. “I mean, we all know you haven’t gotten anywhere with Harper. Like, does she even know you exist, dude?”

“What about you and Maya?” Monty retorted. “Not like you guys have gotten past first base. And I’m going slow with Harper because I don’t want to screw it up!”

Octavia and Miller locked stares, shared an eye-roll in unison.

“Shut up!” Octavia exclaimed, and the bickering ceased. “This isn’t a dick-measuring contest. There’s something weird going on here, and it’s not about your egos.”

“Why were they still here on Friday in the first place?” Miller asked, taking a page from Octavia’s book and ensuring the topic of conversation remained changed. “Did they get trapped during that storm?”

“Maybe they stayed back on purpose,” Jasper suggested. “To –“ he made his left hand into circle and pointed his right index finger, making the unmistakably crude hand gesture for _banging_.

“Could be,” Octavia acknowledged. “But there’s something you’re all forgetting.”

“What?” Miller asked, exasperated and still mutely horrified at his dad’s classroom as the scene of the incident. “Tell us what we’re forgetting, Octavia.”

“They hate each other’s guts,” she said. “This wasn’t passionate, ‘let’s show each other the depth of our feelings’ sex. And after that, things are gonna be hella awkward between them.”

“Hate sex,” Jasper blurted, and Monty elbowed him.

“Shit,” Monty muttered, quickly casting his eyes downward at the chipped plastic lunchtable. “Guys, I think we should stop talking about this.”

“Why?” Octavia asked, her back to their approaching company. “I think the whole school should know Kane and Griffin fucked each other senseless. If they weren’t old enough to be our parents, it might be kinda –“

“Stop talking about my mom,” Clarke Griffin snapped, as Lexa shoved Octavia’s seat forward so her ribs collided with the end of the table. It wasn’t meant to cause her exhorbitant amounts of pain, but it served its purpose: she was no longer talking about Abby.

“Why?” Jasper asked, raising his dark eyebrows and brushing a few strands of stray hair out of his eyes. “It’s just a rumor, right? What’s the big deal?”

“The _big deal_ is that Clarke doesn’t want you idiots spreading lies about her mom,” Lexa said, releasing her hold on Octavia. “Whatever might or might not have happened, it should stay between them.”

Monty, having overcome his shock and muted terror, saw fit to ask a question. “Do you guys know something we don’t?”

“No!” both girls said in unison, then exchanged pointed glances. After an awkward pause, Clarke spoke.

“There’s nothing to talk about because nothing happened,” she said. “My mom stayed late to grade essays on Friday. I don’t know if Kane was here or not. Lexa and I drove through the storm to pick her up, and that’s it.”

Jasper frowned. “Do you know anything about someone breaking into my locker?” He wouldn’t tell student body president Clarke Griffin that his missing artifacts had been several bottles of alcohol, but if she had any leads… “They stole some of my stuff, and I’d really like it back.”

She paused for a moment, as if deciding how best to proceed in this conversation, one she had no desire to have.

“Your locker is your problem, Jasper,” she said hollowly. “And stay out of my mom’s personal life. It’s none of your business.”

With one last glare at each of them in turn, they retreated back to their table across the lunchroom that they shared with Anya, Luna, and a few other girls Octavia had no names for.

“You know what this means, right?” she asked as soon as they were out of earshot, a shit-eating grin creeping across her face.

“It means we’re going to let it go, because Clarke could make our lives a living hell?” Monty asked hopefully, pleading with Octavia through his dark eyes. If she had any sense, she’d drop the subject. The last thing he and Jasper needed was a police dog sniffing around their lockers.

“It means we’re going to mess with them,” Octavia smirked. “Griffin and Kane. I mean, we have to. Did you see the look on her face? On Lexa’s? They know something, and we’re gonna find out what it is. One way or another.”

“Oh, yay,” Miller muttered, scooping applesauce off of his mostly-untouched bagged lunch. “I’ll prepare for my G.P.A. to drop now, then. If we thought Kane was hard before, his class is going to _suck_ now.”

“Those of us who aren’t taking AP Gov don’t give a shit,” Octavia observed. “Jasper, are you in?”

“Hell yeah,” he said, reaching across the table to give his friend a high five.

“Maya won’t approve,” Miller said with raised eyebrows, cautioning him.

“Maya doesn’t have to know,” Jasper retorted. “Monty, what about you?”

“I’m in AP Gov, too,” he said slowly, measuring the reward of embarrassing his teachers against the risk of failing the class, of possible expulsion. Jasper groaned.

“Come on, man,” he said. “Live a little. If we do this right, they’re not gonna know it’s us anyway. What do you have to lose?”

“Admission into Stanford, for one thing.”

Miller nodded sagely, pleased with his friend’s logical response to the situation. At least someone was thinking past next week.

“Fuck Stanford,” Jasper remarked, and Octavia gave a short, barking laugh while Miller hid his head in his hands. “That’s two years away. Right now, we have two teachers who may or may not have banged on the couch in Miller’s dad’s room and a chance to annoy the hell out of one of the most uptight teachers at this school. I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna go for it.”

Monty and Miller locked gazes, as Miller asked a silent question and received an unwanted answer.

“Fine,” Monty mumbled. “I’m in. Are you happy?”

“Yeah!” Jasper raised his hand in a high five, which Monty accepted reluctantly.

“That just leaves you, Miller,” Octavia said. “You in?”

Miller looked from Monty to Octavia to Jasper and back to Monty again, half terrified and half enraptured. Jaha might expel them if they got caught – hell, he might fire Kane and Griffin if he didn’t already know about the rumor, if there ended up being any truth to it. But there was something alluring in the electricity that sparked during their conversation, a promise of a break in the monotony that was school, work, and studying.

Nathan Miller needed a break.

“Okay,” he said. “But only because I have to defend the honor of my dad’s classroom.”

 

***

 

Something was different about Abby’s first-hour class on Tuesday morning, but for the life of her she couldn’t tell what it was. There were miniscule, subtle changes – Jasper was quieter than she’d ever seen him, Octavia kept looking at the clock, Monty was completely absent – but those were puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together. They existed, but didn’t form an image.

Or maybe it was just her, she thought as she handed out instructions for their lab. Maybe it was because she hadn’t had her morning coffee, because the thought of running into _him_ at the Starbucks on the corner of 9 th Street made her blood run cold.

They hadn’t talked since Friday night, and that was just fine with her. He hadn’t stormed across the hallway to slam her door, and she hadn’t reciprocated. It was odd, a bit jarring, that their morning ritual had been disrupted.

And what was there to talk about, really? They’d been close to blackout drunk. She hadn’t been that intoxicated since her freshman year of college, back before she entered her major and had negative amounts of time to devote to the party scene. If she’d had any of her wits about her at all, she wouldn’t have…

Abby felt her face flush as the memories flooded back. His lips on hers, hot, soft, insistent. His hands at her waist, the pinpricks of heat in his fingertips as he pushed her shirt up, his teeth nipping at her breasts, the velvety sound of his voice when he read that poem…

_I’ll always catch you._

“You okay, Mrs. G?” Jasper yelled from his lab table. With an exasperated sigh, she realized her rosy complexion hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“I’m fine. You need to focus on your lab, Jasper,” she said, securing her left hand on her hip. “If you don’t finish in class, your group will have to come in after school.”

He smirked. “I’d hate to have to do that,” he said. “I don’t want to get snowed in.”

Abby fought to her expression neutral while her insides heated up, melted, and then froze completely. Did he know? How did he know? If he knew, then who else did? Who would have told him?

Certainly not Clarke. While her daughter had been mortified and embarrassed to be around her for the better part of the weekend, they’d talked about what happened and Abby made it clear that what she’d seen had been a byproduct of too much to drink and nothing more.

That left only Lexa, who wasn’t likely to have told Jasper. Unless she talked to her older brother Lincoln…and Clarke had mentioned once that Lincoln was dating Octavia…

_Oh._

“Shit,” she breathed, sitting down at her desk and burying her concentration in a stack of homework assignments. She snatched a red pen from a jar of writing utensils and tried to focus on grading, but it was no use: her focus was elsewhere.

Was Marcus – no, _Kane_ , he was still Kane, what she said when she was drunk meant absolutely nothing – getting shit for this, too? Probably not, she decided. The kids were too afraid of him to subject him to this kind of manipulation. And she was too damn kind to put their grades on the line over one remark that, she reminded herself, might have meant absolutely nothing. Maybe Jasper really was just afraid of getting snowed in at school, a place she knew he despised.

If Abby had looked over at her class instead of the stack of papers, she would have noticed Jasper and Octavia exchanging expectant glances, Jasper monitoring the clock on the wall instead of the computer simulation before him. It was clear they were expecting something to happen, something they’d discussed before the start of class…

_Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!_

Abby jumped in her seat, smearing red ink all over Harper McIntyre’s nervous-system labeling worksheet. The lights in the corners of her classroom started to flash and alarms blared, signaling something she hadn’t at all expected on a day like today: a fire drill. But usually Thelonious alerted them when drills were to be hosted, which meant…maybe this wasn’t a drill.

_What the hell?_

Abby shouted to gain control of the horde of anxious teenagers, kids desperate to get outside the building and waste as much class time as humanly possible.

“Everyone, line up and follow me,” she said while yanking on her wool coat and hat, remembering the procedure Thelonious had briefed her on before her first drill. _Down the hall, out the side doors, wait in the parking lot._ She gave a longing glance to her laptop, silently praying that there wasn’t a real fire. If it was, there was no way in hell she’d let it go down in flames with the building.

She waited to be sure everyone was out of her classroom before closing the door and guiding her students down the hallway and out into the biting January cold.

If Abby had looked over at her class instead of the rapidly filling parking lot, she would have noticed Jasper and Octavia exchanging gleeful grins and a discreet high five.

“Nice,” Jasper whispered from the back of the line.

Octavia nodded. “Monty’d better haul ass before Jaha catches him.”

“Jaha won’t catch him,” Jasper insisted. “He’s done this before.”

For the pair of friends huddled together in the winter cold, there was only one thing left to do: wait.

Since their classrooms were across the hall from each other, Abby knew she’d be forced to wait in close proximity to Kane for the all-clear announcement. Prior to last Friday, this wouldn’t have been a problem; she would have ignored him completely, and he wouldn’t have paid her any mind (except to nag her about keeping her class in line).

But since last Friday had been what it was, things were different.

Abby skimmed the crowd of teenagers under the guise that she was looking for Clarke – she had art with Callie first period, didn’t she? – but after locating her distinctive golden braid in the sea of students her eyes fell on him.

He had his back to her and was attempting to continue teaching his lesson, making a series of remarks about the Electoral College that fell on deaf ears. _Only Kane,_ she thought with wry amusement, _would try to keep teaching in two feet of snow._

As loath as she was to admit it, he cut a rather impressive figure in his long, gray wool coat. She hadn’t noticed how broad his shoulders were until now – until his physique was highlighted by the glow of the early morning sun and the luminescent glinting of the snow – and she found herself wondering how a man like him could make such an objectively absurd jacket look good.

He turned around for a split second, just long enough to meet her eyes, and she looked away as her cheeks began to burn. _Damn._

“The building is all clear,” an announcement came, the voice unmistakably Thelonious’s. “Teachers and students, you may return to your classrooms. Thank you for your cooperation.”

So Abby ushered her horde of rapidly-calming students back into the building that was most certainly not on fire, keeping her eyes on anything but the man whose class came before hers.

But the second her kids were back in her classroom and her eyes fell on them, sitting contentedly in their seats, she knew something was wrong.

“Where’s Jasper?” Abby asked, suddenly frantic. She’d seen him enter the building, she knew he was here, but where the hell had he gone after coming inside? “Has anyone seen him?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Griffin,” Octavia said, and Abby couldn’t help thinking she sounded a little _too_ innocent. But she wouldn’t accuse her of lying in front of the class, so she resorted to asking again.

“If anyone knows where he is, I need you to tell me now,” she said, hoping her class understood the severity of the situation. “Otherwise, I’ll have to contact Principal Jaha and get he and Emerson involved.”

The class was silent, which magnified the sudden, intense knocking on the door.

 _Jasper,_ Abby thought, equal parts infuriated and relieved. _Now he decides to come back. Well, at least he’s not running around the halls again._

She strode over to her closed door and pulled open the handle.

“Jasper Jordan,” she said sternly, wanting the force of her rage to be the first thing Jasper heard when that door was opened. “Next time you leave this class without a hall pass, I’ll have to report you to Emerson. No more warnings. No more second chances. Have I made myself-“

“I believe this belongs to you?” Marcus Kane interrupted coolly. Abby was surprised to see him holding Jasper by the upper arm, keeping a firm hold on his stained fleece jacket. His eyes flashed with their trademark annoyance but his tone was softer, far less abrasive than it had been in weeks past. Than it would have been if Friday hadn’t happened.

This, she thought, wasn’t the man who for the past five months had strode over to her door each morning and closed it with a slam that echoed around every corner of Arkadia. This wasn’t the man who ordered her to ‘keep her class under control’ in a tone that could’ve frozen the solutions in every test tube in her classroom. This man was different, calmer, and – she noticed he seemed to have difficulty maintaining eye contact with her – nervous?

This wasn’t Kane. This was Marcus.

“Yes,” Abby said after a beat, slightly stunned. “That’s mine.”

Jasper rolled his eyes, squirming out of Marcus’ grip and trudging back to his seat. Abby could never have seen, but Octavia gave him a discreet high five upon his return.

“It seems he thought he could spend the last fifteen minutes of first period in my class,” Marcus said. “And despite his effort to hide behind Nathan Miller, he couldn’t disguise his lack of knowledge of election processes.”

“Well, he’s in Anatomy,” Abby said. “Not A.P. Government.”

“Clearly,” he responded, his gaze connecting with hers, and she was surprised to uncover a note of amusement in his voice.

Did Marcus think this was funny? Or was he laughing at her all-too-obvious embarrassment, the flush she was certain had crept into her cheeks from the moment she lay eyes on him? She couldn’t help it; every time she looked at him, her brain sprinted back in time to Friday night, to his mouth on hers, to his fingers on her skin. God, how she wished she’d never found that alcohol.

It was undoubtedly below freezing outside, but Abby could have sworn someone turned up the temperature in her room.

They looked at each other for a moment that felt like an eternity, Abby’s tongue lead in her mouth. _Say something!_ she reprimanded herself, but her thoughts were as jumbled and erratic as snowflakes falling from the sky. And what could she say with her entire class watching? “ _I’m sorry I broke into Jasper Jordan’s locker and got us both drunk Friday night. I won’t make out with you on Miller’s couch again.”_

Sure, she could go with that. If she wanted to get fired.

“Well, I should probably-“ Marcus stammered, his hands firmly planted in the pockets of his pants, and Abby nodded while the room started spinning around her. Had she ever noticed he had a slight accent? It was only on certain words, and it was very, very, _very_ faint, but…was it Scottish? Irish? What was the origin of the last name ‘Kane’, anyway?

“Right,” she responded, equally awkward as she glanced beyond him to his classroom full of juniors and seniors, kids who watched their conversation with wide eyes and something like amazement. “Absolutely. Thank you.”

He gave her a nod of acknowledgment and turned back to his class, closing the door with a quiet _click_. With less than ten minutes left in the period, she thought he’d probably still have time to begin his next lesson and assign an amount of homework so imposing that Clarke would complain about through most of dinner.

Through the tiny window to the left of the door she saw his lips move and heard his class erupt in laughter. Did he have a sense of humor? Clarke hadn’t talked about it if he did, but Clarke didn’t much enjoy his class anyway…

“Hey, Mrs. Griffin,” John Murphy yelled from across the room, smirking as he shoved his notebook and pencil case into his backpack. “Are you gonna stare at Kane’s door for the rest of the class? If you are, I’ll leave now. I mean, why wait another seven minutes?”

***

 

 

“Can I come in?”

Abby watched as Marcus flinched in his chair; clearly, her presence in his room had been unexpected. The school day had just ended, and kids were filing through the halls on their way to their cars, the buses, and various after school activities. She wasn’t staying late tonight – she didn’t have to summit the same mountain of work she’d had on Friday – and was looking forward to spending some quality time with her daughter.

“Of course,” Marcus said, his words laced with an odd tightness that Abby thought she could trace back to Friday night. He stood from his desk chair to face her, and she closed the door behind her before making her way toward him.

Three feet, she thought as she approached him. A safe distance. Any closer and she’d start having those dreaded Friday flashbacks all over again. God, when would those stop? Was it just because she hadn’t been with anyone since Jake? Probably. There couldn’t possibly be any other reason.

“I just wanted to apologize,” she started, and the sudden warmth in his brown eyes could have melted her. When had his gaze switched from snowfall to sunlight?

“For Jasper Jordan?” he asked, and she nodded. “There’s no need, Abby.”

Abby shook her head, insistent. “No, he was disruptive,” she said. “I’ve been trying to keep him and Monty under control, but having both of them in the same class has been a nightmare.”

Marcus laughed, a sound Abby realized she hadn’t heard before. It was as warm as his gaze, as bright as the fluorescent lights that hummed above their heads, and she felt a jolt of electricity run through her.

_Get a grip. You were drunk._

“Your daughter and Bellamy Blake aren’t exactly an ideal combination, either,” he said, and Abby frowned. Certainly he wasn’t insulting Clarke to her face, was he? That was something Kane would do, but not Marcus. Which one of them was she talking to?

“Oh?” she said sharply, unconsciously leaning closer as she brushed a few strands of chestnut hair from her eyes. Marcus picked up on her tone and backtracked quickly.

“I just meant they don’t get along,” he said, his words tumbling out with the velocity of an avalanche. “He’s always calling her ‘princess’ – he’s just teasing her – but she gets angry about it. Clarke’s one of my brightest students, though. I don’t think she’ll have anything to worry about when the exams are given.”

“Oh,” Abby said, adopting a tone of comprehension instead of skepticism. _So I’m talking to Marcus._ “Should I tell her you said that?” she asked, teasing him, knowing he had a reputation to maintain.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said, and Abby nearly rolled her eyes. Clearly, this ‘joking’ thing between them would have an adjustment period. “I said I don’t think she’ll have anything to worry about, not that the exam will be easy for her.”

“I was kidding, Marcus.”

He gave her an embarrassed smile. “Oh.”

With that he turned back to his desk, transferring a pile of papers from its surface onto a side table next to the door. It was a sizeable stack – at least a foot tall – and Abby found herself wondering if he intended to grade them all tonight. Did he ever go home? Or did Marcus Kane live at Arkadia?

“Do you need help with those?” she asked as her brain screamed for her mouth to stop moving. The last thing she needed was to keep being around him, to keep bringing up those phantom recollections that meant next to nothing. No matter how addicting it felt to be in his arms, the lightning electricity of his touch…it could have been anyone, she told herself. That was just because Marcus was there, because he’d read some goddamn poetry, and because they were both ten minutes away from passing out.

A tiny voice in the back of her head insisted she wouldn’t have ended up on that couch with Thelonious, or Sinclair, or Miller. Annoyed, she pushed it away.

“They’re already graded,” he said. “But if you could come up with a lesson plan on the voting process for tomorrow, that would be superb.”

A smile crept across her lips before she knew it was there, before she could force it away. _So he_ does _have a sense of humor._

“There’s a reason I’m an Anatomy teacher, Marcus,” she said. “You’re going to have to find someone else to help you with your lesson plans.”

Part of her wanted to ask him why he hadn’t gotten them done – it seemed unlike him to not have things planned weeks ahead – but she let it go. Because that same tiny voice at the back of her skull whispered that it might have had something to do with Friday, that the same reason she hadn’t gotten her kids’ quizzes graded until Sunday night was the same reason he was behind on his lesson plans, that maybe they both couldn’t stop the flashbacks if they were closer than three feet to each other.

He faced her again after placing the stack on the table, wearing a small smile that was all but foreign to her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, ignoring her comment completely. “I had been meaning to talk to you, but I just-“ he paused for a moment, glancing around the room as if the various literary posters on his walls could end his sentence for him. “Hadn’t found a good time.”

Abby’s stomach sank. This was about Friday. It had to be.

“Marcus, we don’t have to talk about it,” she said, consciously forcing her voice to rise above a whisper. “We made a mistake. Are you going to tell me you haven’t made stupid decisions while drunk before?”

 _A mistake._ Certainly, it was. It was an error, a black mark on both of their otherwise spotless records.

 _He was drunk, too,_ she reminded herself. _You don’t know the real Marcus Kane._

And Marcus Kane was closer than three feet to her now, close enough for her to see the shadowy stubble on his chin. And there it was; the tingling on her lips, the lightning flash of a jolt that coursed from her head to her toes.

“Well, that was why I wanted to talk to you,” he said, his tone oddly soft. The smile, the quiet solemnity in his words that contrasted everything he’d ever said to her – who the hell was this man? Where had he been for the past five months?

She gave a brief glance into the hallway, finding it empty. The clock above his door informed her it was almost 3:30; an hour after students were sent home. At this point the doors to the hallways and classrooms were locked, and the only danger they faced from discovery would come from one of their colleagues.

And from the people in their wing of the building, there was relatively little risk. Callie never stayed late, Sinclair exiled himself in his room and didn’t come out until he finished his work. David Miller was the only one who might still be around; he tended to work late during the week so he could leave right away on the weekend. But his room was all the way at the end of the hall…

As he moved closer – probably only a foot away, she estimated – she could smell pine trees, tasted the sweet air of the forest after a heavy rainfall. Was that cologne, or was it just him? The more the distance between them lessened the dizzier she became and the less she cared about the minute possibility of David Miller having a question to ask Marcus Kane and barging in on them.

Of one thing she was certain: she wouldn’t mind making another mistake.

“I know you didn’t mean for anything to happen on Friday night,” he said.

“I didn’t,” she insisted, trying to find her way out of his coffee-colored eyes while her heartbeat drummed a rhythmic accompaniment to her words. “I shouldn’t have gone to Jasper’s locker. That was stupid of me.”

“I shouldn’t have joined you, and that was stupid of me,” he said. “But it’s in the past now.”

She nodded, swallowing hard, trying to keep her eyes from flickering down to his lips. If she tilted her head, angled her body up just a bit…and as much as she tried to forget about it, she’d grudgingly admit he’d been a good kisser. Her mouth watered as she remembered the taste of him, the bitter edges of alcohol smoothed by a sweetness all his own.

“And I think it would be best for us if we leave it there,” he said calmly, and Abby’s blood ran cold, freezing her in place. “We should forget about what happened, Abby.”

Of all the directions this conversation could have taken, she didn’t know why she hadn’t anticipated this one. What did she think was going to happen, she’d walk into his room and they’d pick up where they left off?

“Absolutely,” she said, hoping she sounded at least semi-convincing. “I agree.”

“And I’m sorry for how I acted,” he said. She frowned. Did he mean the slamming doors and general dickishness, or the kissing, or both? “If I had been sober, I never would have…I mean, unless you wanted…”

“It’s fine,” she said abruptly, cutting his rambling sentence short. Although part of her wondered where his stuttering would have ended up, if she’d let it continue its journey. _Unless you wanted…_ what, exactly? “We have to make sure no one finds out, then. I don’t think Thelonious would just ‘leave it in the past.’”

“I’m sure Clarke and Lexa know not to tell anyone,” Marcus said, stepping away to sit down at his desk. “And I don’t think they have security cameras in David’s room. The worst they’d have is the footage from Jasper’s locker.”

“Which would still be enough to get me fired,” Abby said, seconds away from either dropping her head into her hands or storming out of his room. Despite her knowledge that leaving Friday night in the past was for the best, that Marcus was being nothing but logical, there was a silly, impulsive sliver of her heart that made her think maybe he’d been going through the same struggle she was.

Clearly, that hadn’t been the case. And as nauseated as she felt, she couldn’t say she blamed him. They’d been drunk. If she were sober she wouldn’t have kissed him, and vice versa. And they absolutely wouldn’t have ended up on that couch with his hands all over her.

“I don’t think anyone would look at tapes from that time of night,” Marcus said, offering comfort as he stared up at her from his swivel chair. “That’s a bit late to be worrying about anything happening inside the building.”

Abby looked at Marcus. Marcus looked at Abby.

“I need to get home,” she said suddenly, unable to meet his gaze as she backed away and turned toward the door. Time would fade her memories, she knew. But for now they were still too fresh, too real, and standing in this room with the man who was somehow simultaneously a man she’d never seen before and the man she’d kissed was proving to be too much for her.

“Abby?” he said, louder this time. “One last thing.”

Her hand resting on the cool metal of the doorknob, she turned her head to look at him out of the corner of her eye.

“What?” she asked, feeling as though the air in his room was suffocating her.

“I’m moving the date of my test.”


	3. Of Love and Hate

Clarke lay sprawled in front of her laptop on her bedroom floor, her cell phone in one hand as she balanced in front of the screen.

“I’m not nervous about elections,” she told Lexa. “I prepared for this, and I don’t care if Ontari’s brother owns the school.”

She heard Lexa scoff. “He doesn’t own the school, Clarke. He’s just the reason it was brought into the twenty-first century. Did you know that before Roan Azgeda donated $100,000 to our district, we didn’t even have TV’s in our classrooms?”

Clarke shuddered. She wasn’t afraid of Ontari, but if word got out that her brother was such a profound figure in Arkadia’s history…the election might be a landslide, but not in her favor.

“I wasn’t aware of that,” she snapped, her tone frosty as she glared at the essay she couldn’t bring herself to write. “Thank you.”

“I’m only trying to help you prepare,” she said, adopting the rigid, unflinching tone she’d come to know back when they were assigned to work together for a project on radioactive elements during her freshman year. It wasn’t that Lexa wasn’t willing to listen to her ideas; it was that she often thought hers were better.

Truthfully, sometimes they were.

“If you think Ontari won’t use Roan against you, you’re lying to yourself,” Lexa elaborated, and she sighed. “Ignoring the facts won’t change them.”

Clarke still didn’t know why Lexa had stepped down when she’d announced her bid for student body president last year, when she was a sophomore and Lexa a junior. Well, okay, she thought she might know _now_ , now that they’d been dating for the better part of a year. But she’d only been with boys before, and the thing with Finn hadn’t exactly panned out, and she convinced herself over and over again that she was just misreading signals.

After all, Clarke had known Lexa had a reputation for being cold, unemotional. But as they became friends and that friendship escalated, she came to know her emotionless façade was a ploy. Determined to make her decisions based on hard logic and facts, she’d closed herself off to most personal relationships and romantic love after her girlfriend Costia had passed away in a car crash during her freshman year. The only people she’d admit to caring for were Indra, her adoptive mother, and her brother Lincoln. And perhaps Aden, the young boy she befriended as a summer camp instructor.

And more recently, she thought with a rush of warmth, her. Clarke Griffin. One of the only people worthy of Lexa Grounder’s love.

“I know,” she admitted, idly scrolling through pages and pages of an old Word document, trying to draw inspiration from things she’d already written. Her gaze drifted to a set of colored pencils sitting on her nightstand, and she considered postponing the essay to complete her art assignment. Ms. Cartwig had made it clear that just because she and Abby were close, Clarke wouldn’t be afforded any special treatment.

“Your mother understands,” she said after class on the first day of the new semester – God, had that only been a week ago? “It wouldn’t be fair to the other students.”

Clarke had nodded. She understood. But Callie had an eye for art much like her father’s had been, and it was often difficult to maintain her high grade point average with a teacher as talented as her.

_Essay. Art. Essay. Art. Essay…_

“Hello?” Lexa droned and Clarke flinched, wincing as her elbows scraped against the worn, woolly carpet. “Clarke, are you still there?”

“I’m here,” she said. “Sorry. I was just lost in thought.”

“Do you want to talk about what’s wrong?” Lexa asked, her voice going soft, and Clarke bit her lower lip as her stomach churned. There were two people around whom she could never disguise her emotions: her mother, and Lexa. “If it’s Roan, I have some ideas. We could-“

“Lexa, it’s not Roan. And before you ask, it’s not Ontari,” Clarke sighed, rolling over onto her back. Right now, neither the essay nor the sketches were getting done. She wasn’t feeling motivated enough to write, or inspired enough to draw. And she couldn’t keep her eyes off that AP Gov textbook, or those images of her mom on that couch out of her head.

Clarke firmly believed that that was something no child deserved to see. Not that parents couldn’t do that, but why, why had she had to see it? What had she done to deserve it? Was this her punishment for not telling her mom about Lexa until a month ago?

She’d known her mom wouldn’t approve right away – there would always be a part of her that viewed Lexa as her daughter’s competition, as the girl who tried to take the title from Clarke that she’d worked so hard for – but once she explained that things were different now, that she and Lexa had put the past behind them, she gave the relationship her blessing. If Clarke was happy, she knew her mom was happy, too.

And she didn’t hate Kane– much like Callie, he was strict but professional, serious but humorous when the occasion merited it. She didn’t hate Kane, but she couldn’t directly at him in class, either. She didn’t hate Kane, but the thought of her mother on that couch with his hands under her shirt – ugh – was enough to make her taste bile.

“It’s your mom, isn’t it?” Lexa observed, her tone sympathetic. “You’re still thinking about Friday.”

Her girlfriend fell silent, waiting for the response she knew damn well was coming. Sometimes, Clarke thought, it was exhausting to be with someone who knew her better than she knew herself.

“I know they were drunk,” she began, uncertain where she was going but hoping the words fell out of her mouth in some semblance of order. “I get it. She got stuck at school and didn’t want to be around Kane, and he didn’t want to be around her. So they both drank to forget who they were with, I guess. But I don’t understand how that translates to what we saw. I always thought my mom hated him.”

“There’s a thin line between love and hate, Clarke,” she said, and Clarke smiled. She remembered the early days of campaigning all too well, remembered pulling all-nighters and trying to unearth any scrap of dirt she could on one of Arkadia’s most well-respected – and feared – students. It would’ve been fair to say that back then, she despised Lexa Grounder and everything she stood for.

In retrospect, it was almost difficult to believe how much had changed in a year.

“I know,” Clarke said, her tone warm. Imagining Lexa’s smile made hers widen, and she wished she was here with her instead of miles away. “I was just surprised to see them cross it. That’s all.”

“You don’t know that they have,” Lexa retorted. “All we saw were two intoxicated people. They might still hate each other as much as they did.”

Clarke shook her head. “I don’t think so. I saw her looking at him today during the fire drill, and…I don’t think it was an angry glare, Lexa. I know how she used to look at him, and that wasn’t it.”

Lexa gave an exasperated sigh. “You should focus on the election, Clarke. Your mother’s personal life will work itself out.”

“And it doesn’t help that Octavia and her friends are trying to make her life harder,” Clarke said, choosing to ignore Lexa’s claim. “Why can’t they just leave her alone?”

“They will,” Lexa reassured her, ever the pinnacle of poise and rationality. “You have to give this some time to dissipate. It’s a rumor right now, but they won’t get any evidence to prove it. Abby and Kane are too smart for that.”

Staring up at the light blue ceiling of her room, Clarke silently willed the world to stop spinning and her stomach to stop churning. Why had she thought that bringing this up with Lexa, the girl who had sworn off emotions for nearly two years, would be a good idea?

Clarke blurted out the words before she could stop herself.

“I don’t want her to get her heart broken again,” she said. “It’s only been a year since my dad’s accident. And she hasn’t been with anyone since then, and I thought I knew how she felt about Kane. But maybe I don’t, maybe she never hated him. And-“

“I understand,” Lexa interrupted her in perhaps the softest tone of voice Clarke had ever heard her use. “You love her, and you’re worried this incident with Kane will cause her pain. That she thinks he’s someone he’s not.”

“Exactly,” Clarke said, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. _Maybe if I count back from ten, the ringing in my ears will stop._

“Your mother is strong,” Lexa said, her tone hardening. This was no longer an attempt at comfort; this was Lexa stating what she believed as an undeniable fact. “Nothing she’s endured in the past has broken her. I’m certain that whatever emotions she’s feeling, she can deal with them. You need to let her, Clarke.”

She was quiet for a moment, digesting Lexa’s words.

“I’m allowed to be worried for her, Lexa,” she said after a pause. She didn’t mean to sound angry; she only meant to make her point. “She’s my mom.”

“I never said you shouldn’t care,” Lexa reiterated. “But why don’t you take a rest from worrying until we know there’s something to be concerned about?”

Clarke exhaled slowly, and the room fell back into place.

“You’re right,” she said. Those words had long ceased tasting bitter in her mouth – they thought enough of each other to acknowledge when the other person was right.

It was high time, Clarke thought, for a subject change.

“Are you sure you can’t go to Mount Weather next year?” she asked. The knowledge that in a few short months they’d spend months apart was enough to send throngs of dull pain radiating through her body. A year in high school without Lexa, Anya and Luna would be torture. “They have a good Political Science program, and you’d only be a few hours away instead of across the country.”

She couldn’t see her girlfriend’s face, but her smile lived in her words.

“No matter where I go, Clarke Griffin, I’ll always be with you.”

 

***

Abby sprinted into school, racing against the clock as the soles of her black leather boots slipped and slid on the tile floor, slick with melted snow and winter grime. It hadn’t been a particularly great Thursday morning; between the grey skies and the frigid weather, it was all she could do to drag herself out of bed. Much less stumble to her class to teach. _One more day,_ she told herself. One more day until the weekend, until she could free herself from Arkadia’s halls for another peaceful two days. Marcus Kane – free days.

The thought of seeing him somehow still managed to lodge a pit in her stomach, even though it had been two days since they’d talked in his classroom. He was right, she knew – they shouldn’t just forget about it because it was embarrassing and humiliating - they should forget about it because it could cost them their jobs if they didn’t. Marcus was nothing, she thought, if not rational.

She rounded a corner to her hallway, eyeing her classroom at the end of the corridor, bag containing her graded papers and lesson plans in hand. If she found Jasper and Monty dancing on lab tables again, she’d report them both to Emerson. On a good day she’d let them off with a warning, but today was decidedly not a good day. Not even close.

Given that this was not a good day, it almost made sense that she didn’t watch where she was going. It almost made sense for her to slip and fall, landing flat on her back in the middle of the hallway with a thud that echoed embarrassingly through every classroom in the north wing of Arkadia.

Lying on her back in the middle of the hallway, every ounce of air knocked out of her lungs, Abby Griffin briefly considered making a run for it out the nearest door and calling in sick.

“Abby?” a voice dimly sounded, morphing from confused to concerned in the two syllabes it took to say her name. _No. Please, no._

She scrambled to her feet, determined not to trip again, determined to be vertical before Marcus Kane reached her from the end of the hallway. Why wasn’t he in his room? He didn’t usually wander the halls before class started.

“Are you all right?” he asked as she stood, brushed herself off, and began collecting the papers that had spilled from her bag.

“I’m fine,” she said, doing her best to keep her tone as neutral as possible. Why couldn’t Sinclair or Callie have seen her fall? Why did it have to be Marcus?

For his part, he didn’t seem to be holding her tumble against her. Marcus knelt down on the waterlogged tile to help her collect her things, salvaging the wreckage as best he could.

In the midst of picking up John Murphy’s dripping lab report, she couldn’t help stealing a glance at him. Had anyone told him he wasn’t a professor at Mount Weather? He didn’t have to wear a suit jacket and tie to teach high school students. Not that she was complaining…

_We should forget about what happened, Abby._

Staring at him as he carefully slid papers into her bag wasn’t forgetting. It was remembering, and she’d sworn to herself that her days of remembering were over.

There was only one essay left, a paper that had landed few inches in front of her, and she looked away from him to focus her attention on it. His hand brushed hers as they reached for the paper in unison, the first skin-to-skin contact they’d had since…

“Sorry,” Marcus said, withdrawing his hand as quickly as it had met her own. “I was just-“

“No, it’s fine,” Abby interrupted, snatching the paper and shoving it into her bag, gritting her teeth at the discordant noise of papers folding and ripping under the pressure she’d applied. “Thank you for helping.”

“Of course,” he said, walking with her as she began to make her way toward her classroom. She kept her eyes on the rows of lockers, the open doors to the other classrooms, windows to other worlds in which she wished she could live. Worlds where Marcus Kane’s classroom wasn’t right across the hall from hers, worlds where she wouldn’t be dealing with Jasper Jordan first thing in the morning, worlds where Friday night hadn’t happened and she hadn’t just fallen on her ass for the whole school to see.

Someone, somewhere, would have a laugh at that security footage.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked again, slowing to a stop outside her room. Her breath caught as he reached forward as if to touch her, to rest his hand on her arm, but dropped his hand to his side before contact could be made. As if he’d thought better of it at the last second.

“I’m a doctor, Marcus,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as disappointed as she felt. Apparently, the only type of contact they were going to have now was accidental. Probably for the best, considering last week had been an accident, too. The sooner she convinced her heart to see it that way, the better. “I think I’d know if I wasn’t okay.”

He tilted his head as he smiled his amused smile, the one of which she hadn’t thought his features were capable. A curiosity sparkled in his brown eyes, and she remembered he had no clue what she’d done with her life before teaching at Arkadia. The last few months hadn’t been this…peaceful? Confusing? At any rate, they hadn’t exactly sat down over coffee and shared life stories.

“A doctor? I suppose I should have known,” he remarked. “As you’ve often reminded me, you teach Anatomy.”

“Well, there you have it,” she said, matching his smile with one of her own. “I guess you can call me ‘Doctor Griffin’ now.”

“I guess so,” he said, still smiling that dumb smile, that smile that made her hyper-aware of every beat of her heart and every shallow breath flowing through her lungs. The smile that did things to her, idiotic, infuriating things, things that made her yearn for the relative comfort and safety of the cold, wet tile floor.

And the security cameras saw something neither of them did: Jasper, Monty and Octavia, angling themselves at the perfect position in Abby’s doorway as to not be noticeable to either of the teachers.

“Damn,” Monty whispered. “I don’t know if those rumors are true, but Kane’s got it _bad_. He’s looking at her like she’s a new set of textbooks. Like she’s a pile of pop quizzes he’s about to hand out. Like-”

“Shhhhh!” Octavia shushed him with a finger to her lips and a frosty frown. “Shut up! They’ll see us!”

“So?” Jasper retorted, defending his friend. “What are they gonna do, report us to Emerson? They can’t give us detention. We’re still-“ he paused, checking to make sure the soles of his sneakers still lay within classroom boundaries – “In class on time.”

Octavia gave an almost pained groan. “You two are jeopardizing this whole operation. I should do this by myself.”

“So, what are we watching today?” a voice sounded, too arrogant to belong to any of the three observers, and Octavia spun around in annoyance. Who the hell dared to…

“Murphy,” she said, clenching her jaw. “What the hell do you want? We’re trying to get something done.”

One side of his mouth quirked toward the ceiling tiles, toward the mysterious stains above their heads that no one, least of all her, wished to know the origin of.

“Same as you,” he said, and Octavia’s frown deepened. “I wanna know if there’s something going on between the hardass English teacher and the Princess’s mom.”

“Why do you care about them?” Jasper asked, sounding genuinely confused. It wasn’t like Murphy had any emotional investment in Clarke Griffin or either of the teachers in question.

“I don’t, really,” he said. “But I’m gonna be out of here in the next four months. Might as well raise hell now, right?”

Jasper gave a shrug of agreement – it was, to some extent, the same justification he’d given Monty. Just in harsher terms. In _Murphy_ terms.

Having given up completely on observing Griffin and Kane, Octavia turned the full force of her attention and skepticism on their new visitor. She didn’t know much about John Murphy, other than that he and her brother had an often shaky friendship and that it would be a small miracle if he did actually graduate in four months. But this was enough for her to make a pivotal conclusion: there had to be something in this to benefit him.

“What are you getting out of this?” she asked, and his blue eyes flashed with faint amusement.

“Getting? I’m not getting anything out of finding out Kane and Griffin did each other,” he said. “Although I do have a sizeable amount of money riding on proving they did it, but hey. That’s probably not important.”

“There are betting pools?” Monty asked, astounded. “How many people know about this?”

“How would I know?” Murphy responded, giving Monty a condescending glare. “My bet is with your brother,” he elaborated, returning his focus to Octavia. “And if I’m right, he’s gonna be at least a hundred dollars poorer.”

Octavia rolled her eyes. “My brother’s on the wrong side.”

“Obviously. But what I came over here to tell you is that your little observe-and-report plan isn’t going to work.”

Every muscle in Octavia’s body went rigid. Who the hell was John _fucking_ Murphy to tell her and her friends that the plan they’d crafted carefully in group messages and lunch conversations over the past three days wasn’t good enough?

“What would you suggest, Murphy?” she asked, layering her words with a hefty dose of sarcasm.

“I’m not saying I have specifics,” he admitted, and Octavia returned her focus to the teachers. Kane was saying something and Griffin was smiling…wait, no, they were _both_ smiling. Grinning at each other like idiots. If the fire alarm went off now, she thought, neither of them would’ve heard it.

“But sometimes if you need something to happen, you’ve gotta make it happen,” Murphy said.

“What do you mean?” Jasper asked.

“Look. I get what you guys are seeing out there. I do. But Kane and Griffin are both ancient. They’re gonna take things at a glacial pace, because that’s what people their age do. And that doesn’t help any of us,” Murphy said. Then after a moment, he added, “And they’re not getting any younger.”

“Great,” Octavia said, trying to keep her mounting frustration at bay as it threatened to bubble over. The last thing she needed was another visit to Jaha’s office. “Thanks for your input, Murphy. If you ever decide to be helpful, let us know.”

“No problem,” he said, giving her a patronizing pat on the shoulder that she shrugged off in disgust. “Make it happen, Blake.”

_Make it happen._

As the bell rang and she trudged back to her seat, Octavia mulled over those three words to the point where they almost lost all meaning. _Make it happen._

With someone as stubborn as Abby and clueless as Kane, there wasn’t really a good way to set the gears in motion. Maybe if her daughter wasn’t Clarke Griffin, student body president, they’d have some wiggle room. But as things were now, their plans were stuck crawling through a vent that kept getting smaller.

So they had to get out of the vent. They had to find another way to their destination. But how?

Her musings were interrupted by Abby Griffin’s arrival, her cheeks flushed, a weird wet stain on her jacket and the back of her pants that probably didn’t have anything to do with Kane. But hell, she’d read into it anyway.

She threw her giant bag of papers down on the ground and gave a loud sigh, pausing just long enough for Murphy to open his mouth and fire a comment her way.

“Mrs. Griffin,” he said, smirking, propping his feet up on his desk. “Are you and Kane done exchanging vows now? I’m offended I wasn’t invited to the ceremony.”

The class laughed, but Octavia found herself cringing. The majority of the time, Abby held it together. She was remarkably good under pressure and didn’t suffer teenage idiots gladly. She was seemingly bulletproof, unbreakable behind her leather boots and navy blue tops and pencil skirts. No matter what Jasper or Murphy aimed at her she was able to turn it around and fire right back, usually in a humorous, sarcastic way that made the class erupt in laughter. That was something Octavia had to respect her for, no matter who her daughter was.

But Murphy’s comment, apparently, was the leak that burst the dam.

“John Murphy,” she snapped, and all twenty-five teenagers in the room fell silent in perfect unison. “If you make another comment like that, I’m sending you down to Principal Jaha. You can try, but I doubt he’ll find it funny. But if you’re so inclined, keep making your jokes. You’ll have lots of time to make them when he gives you a suspension.”

Octavia looked over at Jasper, only to find him already looking at her.

 _Too far,_ she mouthed. Because it was true – Murphy had taken it too far. If that was his way of making things happen, she wanted no part of it.

But his words had some mileage, she had to admit. Nothing was going to happen between the teachers if they let things play out organically. She, Jasper, Monty and Miller just needed to find the middle ground between the way things were now and Murphy’s blatant harassment.

 _Vows,_ she mused as she passed her homework forward, a worksheet to which she’d Googled most of the answers and left the rest blank. He alluded to wedding vows. What an idiot. Why would he reference that in the first place? Just to be an ass?

Unless…this wasn’t about the _type_ of vow. Unless it didn’t have to be related to marriage. There were vows of love, too. Vows of unconditional adoration.

She dropped her chin to her chest, concealing a grin from her teacher as she began the day’s lesson on the bones in the arm.

Suddenly, she knew how to make it happen.


	4. Of Visitors and Ice Scrapers

“What’s up, Mrs. G?” a voice asked, and Abby almost dropped one of the glass test tubes she’d been cleaning. For the first time in the past week, she felt herself smile without a twinge of sadness, without questioning, without the insistent nagging of regret and doubt.

“Raven,” she said, astounded. “What are you doing here?”

“Winter break,” the girl responded, walking over to stand beside Abby, whose hands were still gloved and dripping over the sink. She looked much the same as she had when she’d gone to Arkadia – same brown hair and tanned skin, same cocky smile with a tinge of sweetness. Even her red winter coat was the same. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year.

“You guys started at the beginning of the month, but I don’t go back until the 21st,” Raven elaborated. “So I thought I’d stop by and see everyone while I’m in town.”

Abby peeled off her yellow rubber gloves, leaving them in the sink, enveloping her daughter’s old friend in a warm embrace.

“It’s so good to see you,” Abby said, pressing her friend close, fingers landing between tufts on the girl’s quilted jacket. She hadn’t been thinking about Raven much – Clarke had told her a few weeks ago that Raven had gotten an apartment on campus and would be taking a class during the winter break. Abby had tried to hide her disappointment at the revelation; the holidays were rough enough without Jake, and it would’ve helped Clarke to at least have Raven’s cheerful banter and bright smile to shine through the darkness. Honestly, she’d known it would help her, too. Having Callie and Indra around was nice, and they would certainly listen if she needed to talk, but they lacked Raven’s easy laughter, her undeniable zest for life. She was like the lights on the tree that glowed and sparkled in different colors; unique, bright, and vibrant.

“It’s good to be back,” Raven said as she let go. “I’m actually happy my class got canceled. Gives me some time to relax. Not that first semester was hard, but…”

“Does Clarke know you’re here?” Abby asked, feeling her back pocket for her phone. One text, and Clarke would come sprinting across the school. Just the thought was enough to put a smile on her face.

“Nope,” Raven said. When Abby gave a small frown, she elaborated. “I’m going to surprise her at lunch, Abby. What, did you think I was going to leave without telling her?”

Abby laughed at the thought, realizing how ludicrous her original reaction had been. “No. I was just making sure,” she said. “I know she misses you.”

“I miss her, too,” Raven admitted. “Don’t get me wrong, college is nice. The people are nice. But it takes time to build history with someone, you know? You can’t just walk in somewhere and have all the inside jokes and stuff. It’s frustrating.”

 _It takes time to build history with someone._ Like slamming doors and yelling at each other over test dates? Like getting drunk together and making out on school grounds? Like walking to classrooms together and leaning against lockers and talking?

Sure. If one week was history.

“How are you liking the weather?” Abby asked as they took seats across from each other at the lab table nearest the window. She remembered, albeit faintly, that Raven went to school in California. This would be a change for her.

“It’s cold as fuck,” Raven said, glaring outside as if snowdrifts had called her mechanical skills into question.

Abby thought she might understand Raven’s reaction to the weather; the snow and ice probably made walking difficult with her leg. She’d lost the use of it after a childhood accident and although she’d grown up here she’d become accustomed to California weather.

Of course, she wouldn’t mention her conclusion. Not to Raven Reyes, the veritable poster child for never asking for help.

“Oh, great,” Raven said, layering her words with a thick coating of sarcasm. “It’s snowing. God, why couldn’t you guys live somewhere warm?”

“You grew up here, Raven.”

“Yeah. And I moved to California,” she said, gesturing westward with a sweep of her hand. “Because I needed to get away from this bullshit. Strike one, Abby.”

“It’s not so bad,” Abby said, trying to justify the flurry of white flakes pouring from the mass of gray clouds that spanned as far as the eye could see. “Summers are nice here, right?”

“I’m back here for the summer, Abby. I’m not staying on campus unless I get an internship. So that’s strike two.”

Abby made a show of considering her next phrase, wondering what would happen when she reached strike three.

“Well, you have Clarke and Sinclair and I here,” Abby said. “You don’t have us in California.”

Raven smiled with a quirk of the right side of her mouth. “Yeah, you’ve got me there. I don’t suppose you guys would be interested in moving?”

“No, Raven, we’re not.”

“Oh. Well that’s strike three, then.”

Abby smiled. “Uh-oh.”

“Now I get to ask you something, Doctor G.”

Abby’s stomach dropped faster than the golf ball-sized hail they’d had in the middle of April. Not that she didn’t mind being asked things, but there was one thing in particular she didn’t want to be asked about. At all.

So naturally, Raven Reyes chose that topic around which to center her question.

“What’s up with you and Kane?”

It was as if she’d stepped outside without her jacket, as if she’d lain down in the snow in nothing but her sweater and skirt. Every muscle in her body tensed, her back went rigid, her fingers tightened around the ends of the stool on which she sat.

“How do you…” she started, then trailed off when she realized starting her response with a question would likely raise even more suspicion. “There’s nothing going on there, Raven.” Then after a pause she added with a smirk, “Strike one.”

“Oh come on,” Raven said, her last two words coming out as an exasperated groan. “Clarke told me about what happened. Jasper and Monty never kept that much alcohol in their lockers, Abby. You weren’t blackout drunk. Trust me. I know blackout drunk.”

Choosing to pretend she hadn’t heard the last sentence, Abby continued. “Some of us don’t have your tolerance, Raven,” she said. But Raven’s words had stuck, lodged themselves into some annoying crevice in her brain that she couldn’t quite scrape clean. What if she wasn’t completely drunk that night? She hadn’t been thinking clearly, that much she knew; sober Abby Griffin didn’t fuck her co-worker on her other co-worker’s couch. Even drunk Abby Griffin, she thought, should have really known that.

Unless on some level, sober Abby Griffin was okay with it. Unless sober Abby had on some level fantasized about that couch, about the stubble on Marcus Kane’s arrogant face that was slowly maturing to a full-grown beard, about how it would feel for him to run his fingertips over her skin and bury his mouth between her…

“Raven, what are you doing?” Abby asked. It was more of an exclamation than a question: Raven had pulled out her phone and, despite her best attempt to make it appear as though she were taking a ‘selfie’, her flash had gone off. Why the hell was she…?

“Your face is bright red,” Raven laughed. “Seriously, Abby. I’m starting to think you knew what you were doing with Kane.”

She tapped the screen a few times, then handed the phone to her across the lab table. It would have been a decent picture, Abby thought, if her face hadn’t been the exact hue of a cherry tomato in midsummer.

“Delete it,” Abby insisted, looking for the right button to press to erase the image from existence forever. No one else needed to see it. No one else needed to know how her face looked when Marcus Kane was mentioned.

“I can’t,” Raven said. “Well, I could, I guess. But I already sent it to Jasper and Monty and Clarke.”

“How the hell did you send it to that many people so quickly?”

“There’s a thing called a group chat, Abby. You might be part of one someday.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not deleting it, though,” Raven insisted, and Abby groaned. “It’s too damn good. Is there a reason you guys haven’t hooked up yet? For real this time?”

“I’m guessing Clarke told you,” Abby said, opting to give up on the photo for now. But if Raven came over and left her phone lying around…and Abby somehow managed to figure out the password…there would be hell to pay.

“Yeah. She needed to tell someone who was thousands of miles away,” Raven said. Abby nodded. It made sense; she couldn’t talk to anyone here, so she’d talk to someone who was too far away to get wrapped up in the drama.

Now that she was home, Abby thought that might change.

“You could have done way worse than Kane, Abby,” Raven said, her lovably arrogant tone turning serious. “He’s pretty hot. If I were ten years older…hell, I’d do him now, actually. The whole teacher-student thing would’ve been a little weird, though.”

Abby buried her head in her hands.

“We were drunk,” she mumbled through her fingers. “Wasted. Whatever you guys are calling it now. Marcus and I weren’t thinking clearly, and it happened, and now it’s over. Strikes two and three.”

“That’s not how the strike system works.”

The lunch bell rang, and relief coursed through every inch of her body. Abby Griffin wasn’t a religious woman, but the timing of this made her want to get down on her knees and say a damn prayer. The last thing she needed was to be discussing her feelings with Raven Reyes, of all people.

That said, she was still one of her daughter’s closest friends, and it would be rude not to…

“Raven,” Abby said as the girl stood up from her stood, striding quickly toward the door. It was likely she knew she’d overstepped some invisible boundary, but more likely she just wanted to see her friends at lunch. “Would you like to come over for dinner tonight? I’m sure Clarke would love to spend some more time with you.”

Raven grinned, and Abby knew what was going to come out of her mouth before it escaped into the open air.

“You cook? Since when?”

Abby rolled her eyes.

“Since always, Raven. Just because Jake did the majority of the cooking doesn’t mean –“

“Yeah, okay,” Raven interrupted, looking down the hallway while rocking from the balls of her feet to her tiptoes. “Whatever you say, Abby. Just let me know what time.”

This, Abby realized, was what she’d missed. Not the teasing about Marcus or the picture-taking – both of which needed to stop immediately – but this easy, lighthearted banter. She was smiling before she knew she was smiling, and appreciated Raven’s ability to do that to her. It was a rare talent that only her and Clarke possessed.

She thought back to the conversation by the lockers earlier today.

Well, maybe there was a third person who could do that, too. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it.

“7 o'clock!,” Abby yelled as Raven disappeared into the swarm of teenagers. Then, as an afterthought, “Delete that picture!”

Abby couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard Raven yell, “Not a chance!”

***

“Do you need some help?” Marcus yelled across the parking lot, hoping his words would travel the distance. Abby was making a valiant attempt to scrape the ice and snow from her windows with her bare hands, remnants from the storm that occurred earlier that day – apparently, Doctor Abby Griffin didn’t believe in scrapers – and as objectively amusing as it might have been to sit back and watch, he couldn’t allow her to get frostbite when he had a solution clutched in his right hand.

Abby turned, the wind caressing her chocolate-colored hair and teasing it over the shoulders of her black jacket. Even in the aftermath of a winter storm, she was striking.

She was striking, and he had to remind himself to breathe, he had to remind himselfyet again that there was no future for them. Maybe there could have been if he hadn’t gotten drunk, if he hadn’t let himself succumb to her, if he’d done the honorable thing and said ‘no’ and locked himself in his classroom instead of reading poetry. As it stood now, a relationship between the two of them came with a high amount of risk. Rumors were still flying about last week, and they certainly didn’t need to add to the speculation.

But damn, her eyes – eyes the color of the first soil of spring, eyes that brought him scent of summer and dispelled the gray skies that hung overhead - made it hard for him to do the honorable thing. And her voice, those husky tones that somehow reminded him of glowing summer campfires, the tiniest hint of smoke, the sparkling of embers…

“No, I’m fine,” she insisted, and he bit his tongue against the sarcastic response that threatened to escape. Of course Abby Griffin would say she was fine, continue stubbornly chipping away at the ice on her car with her trembling, red hands. Because anything else would be an admittance of defeat.

Fully aware his assistance wasn’t requested, he made his way across the slush and salt to her Toyota, where she was (rather adorably, he thought) jumping like a teenager at prom to try to clear the upper edge of her rear window.

“Abby, stop,” he said, leaning against the right door. “You’ve already fallen once today.”

“Hilarious,” she deadpanned and continued jumping, the scratching of her nails against the ice forming a peculiar staccato. “Not like it was embarrassing enough the-“

And her boot hit a patch of ice and she lost her balance, trying to lean forward to catch the car or the wiper or something, but she’d slipped too far away.

And in an instant he’d darted forward and wrapped his fingers around her forearm in a late attempt to steady her, to keep her from falling over, but it was too late.

And the next thing he felt was the frigid embrace of the snowbank, the pinpricks of freezing wetness as his skin and coat collided with freshly-fallen snowflakes.

And he realized Abby had landed on top of him, and the snowbank ceased to matter.

He would’ve been lying if he said he hadn’t thought about that night. About what would have happened if Clarke hadn’t gotten there, if they would’ve stayed together on that couch. Would he have been able to hold her, to kiss her velvet lips for hours on end, to make love to her until the sun came up? To hear her say his name in the heat of the moment, breathing it in that husky voice of hers that doused his body with gasoline and lit a match?

This was, of course, completely different than that night. For one thing, he’d been on top of her then – not that that mattered, she was beautiful either way – and for another, the definition of those memories was blurred by alcohol and unfettered emotion. This memory was fresh, clear, etched into his memory in high definition from the moment she landed between his legs with her head on his chest.

She stared at him.

He stared at her.

He opened his mouth.

She pushed herself away.

“Sorry,” she said, sounding completely mortified as she stood and offered him a hand. “I didn’t mean to-“

“It’s fine,” Marcus said as he stood, his hand in hers. His heart wasn’t working right, beating too damn fast for any level of comfort, and he was thankful that the cold weather had stopped most of the blood flow to a particular area of his body.

They broke the contact in unison, both choosing to focus on the car in front of them instead of what had just transpired between them. It was easier, he thought, that way. It was always easier for them to focus on what was instead of what could be. That was just the kind of people they were, he and Abby. They didn’t deal in the nebulous future, in a fantasy world. They lived in the here and now.

Allowing himself one more glance at her before diving into the car trouble, he almost wished they could break their own rules. Think about the future, about each other. Just for once.

Then the moment passed, and he was himself again.

“You should get in the car and turn on the heat,” he said. “That’ll soften up the ice to the point where we can scrape it off.”

Abby nodded, brushing past him to reach the driver’s side door. “You’re right. I should have thought of that. It’s been a long day.”

Marcus aimed a sympathetic smile at the back of her head, wondering if she could see it in the rear view mirror. “At least tomorrow’s Friday.”

“True.”

Neither of them acknowledged what Friday marked the one-week anniversary of, and he thought it best to steer the conversation into safer territory.

“Are Monty and Jasper giving you trouble again?”

She shook her head. “No, today it was John Murphy. Sometimes I really don’t understand what makes him say the things he says. Did someone, at some point, just tell him it was okay to say whatever came into his head?”

“Or maybe they gave up on telling him not to,” Marcus observed, and she laughed.

“You’re probably right,” she said, prying open the door with a firework-like explosion of snow and ice.

Marcus smirked, moving closer in case she needed help. “Well, that’s something I thought I’d never hear.”

She looked up at him from her seat, rummaging around for her keys inside her purse.

“What?”

“You admitted I was right.”

Her expression went neutral for a moment, and he worried he’d gone too far. This was the most natural they’d been around each other, even counting the drunk night, and he didn’t want to squander it on a misguided attempt to hear that laugh of hers again.

But damn, it wasn’t often she actually admitted he was right. About anything.

Then she smirked right back at him, her eyes alight with that trademark spunk he’d grown to expect from her as the ends of her pink lips edged toward the gray sky, and for a fraction of a second he thought his heart might actually burst.

It should be illegal, he thought, for one person to have such a profound effect on another. Especially when it’s been established over and over and over again that nothing could happen, for the sake of both of their jobs. And the school district.

“Don’t get used to it, _Kane_ ,” she said, emphasizing his surname, and he went hot and cold all over as his brain turned to mush. There was no malice here, just her and the car that dwarfed her tiny frame completely and she’d finally found her keys and oh God, was Doctor Abigail Griffin _flirting_ with him? “It doesn’t happen often.”

Satisfied that he didn’t have a comeback to hurl her way (and it was true, every neuron in his brain had called a cease-fire from the moment she gave him that infuriating – dare he call it sexy? – smirk) she turned her key in the ignition and he waited for the roar of the engine to signal their troubles were over.

And nothing happened.

They both frowned, glanced at each other for silent affirmation, and Abby removed the key, re-inserted it, and tried again.

And nothing _happened_.

“Shit,” she breathed, her single word riding on a misty whisper. But, Abby being Abby, she couldn’t leave it at ‘shit.’

“Dammit!” she exclaimed, pounding her hands against the steering wheel. Marcus leaned closer, desperate to keep her from injuring herself (or doing any more damage to the car, which he suspected had come down with a bad case of dead battery syndrome).

“Hey,” he said. “We’ll get it fixed.”

He had no idea how – he’d never had this problem – but that was what Google was for, right? If he could figure out what the hell to put in the search box. How to not act like an idiot when fixing a car around the woman you…

Nope. Even thinking it was too much.

“Marcus, I don’t have time for this,” she said, her words blurring together to sound like one long, six-syllable behemoth. Marcus, _Idon’thavetimeforthis._

The question was, why? Why didn’t she have time to fix her car? There were a thousand reasons. Maybe she had a lot of work to do, maybe she’d planned on spending time with Clarke tonight, maybe she was going to work out – she seemed like the type of person who did something to stay in shape, although he couldn’t guess what – or maybe she just didn’t want to be stuck in the freezing cold as the sun dipped lower and the temperature went from “cold” to “I’d sooner stick my fingers in a blender than go outside, because it would have the same effect.”

Did she have a date?

It was fine if she had a date, he reassured himself. Healthy, even. It had been a year since Jake, and a woman like her wouldn’t have a shortage of admirers. Clarke would go to college next year, and she shouldn't be alone for the rest of her days.

He’d seen the way Jaha looked at her when she wasn’t looking, when they all sat together during meetings and tried to stay awake while someone from higher up in the district lectured them about “togetherness” and effective methods of teaching. It hadn’t escaped him, the way his gaze trailed over her body, the hungry stares that strayed dangerously close to yearning.

It was fine if she had a date. It was fine if it was with Thelonious, it was fine if it wasn’t. Because she had her life and he had his, and they were destined to remain separate, just as the snow was destined to melt and her car was destined to start and get out of this tiny parking lot in the back corner of the school, the corner of which bordered the woods. Or, so he hoped.

Really. It was fine if she had a date. Good for her.

“You’re quiet,” she observed as she got out of the car and slammed the door, and he came back to reality.

“I’m just thinking,” he said. “About how we can jump start the battery.”

“You think it’s the battery?”

“I think so. What else could it be?”

“I don’t know, Marcus,” she sighed. “Jake would have known. Jake got me out of this once before, with the same damn car. He tried to teach me what he did, but that was years ago. And I was so relieved when the stupid thing started running again that I forgot what he taught me. “

 _Jake_. His eyes drifted to the metal chain she wore around her neck and the ring that he knew rested in the space just below the hollow of her throat. It glowed red in the setting sun as the clouds began to part, and Marcus began wondering if she had a date at all. Something in the way she said her husband’s name made him think not, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with that information. But for some reason, it felt as though the realization had lifted a great weight off his shoulders.

“Let me get my phone,” he said. “We can call someone and get this figured out.”

“I can’t sit in this parking lot for another three hours,” she said. It wasn’t a complaint, it was a fact. Abby Griffin could not sit in Arkadia’s staff-only parking lot for another three hours while she waited for the nearest car servicing staff to drive down from Mount Weather. The question was, why?

She elaborated without prompting this time, and for that he was grateful.

“I’m supposed to make dinner for Raven and Clarke tonight,” she said with a deep sigh, her shoulders slumping in exhaustion and shame. “I should be at the grocery store getting ingredients right now, not sitting here with this stupid thing.”

He looked at her under the sky’s red and gray conglomerate, making her chestnut-colored hair look almost black in the dimming light, the tiny clouds that escaped from between her cold-reddened lips with each breath she breathed. The frigid air had brought a flush to her cheeks that transformed her eyes into a richer shade of brown than usual, and the backdrop of the snow made her entire body glow like an angel’s halo.

The wind blew her hair into her face and she made a sound of indignation, moving to brush it away.

Marcus was grateful that at least for the time being, at least for that moment when her hair blew into her eyes, he didn’t have to act like he wasn’t completely in awe of her. He could let his guard down and feel everything he was feeling for her – his reverence for her strength, her courage to keep going after Jake’s accident. Respect for her teaching, her fortitude, her damn-it-all-I-do-what-I-want determination. He was but a snowflake in her blizzard, but he was thankful to at least be part of the storm.

“Here’s an idea,” he said as soon as she’d cleared her hair from her face, masking his gazing with words. “Why don’t we call now, then go to the store in my car and get the ingredients? Then I’ll drop you off at home and take care of this when they get here.”

Abby raised her eyebrows. “And you don’t think I’d have to be here?”

Oh. Damn. So much for thinking clearly around her.

“Wait,” Marcus said, fully aware of what he was about to do, the truth he was about to stretch. It was for the greater good, he told himself. She needed to get home, and he needed to make sure her car was fixed, and how hard could it be, really? He’d seen kids jump start their cars all the time. And people did it on TV shows. Granted, they weren’t shows that he watched, but… “Abby, I think I’ve done this before.”

Her eyebrows went higher. “And you didn’t think to mention that before, Marcus?”

“I just remembered. It’s been a while, but I think I can do it.”

A lie, and he knew it. But he had degrees from Mount Weather – in Political Science and English, granted – but they were degrees, dammit. He’d figure this out or freeze to death trying.

Either one was a viable option, he thought grimly.

“Okay,” Abby said, sounding skeptical. But he guessed she chose to pick her battles, and found this one not worth fighting. “Are we still going to the grocery store, then?”

“That’s up to you,” he said. “It might take me a few hours to get the car working again, and there’s a fair amount of drive time. I don’t know if you know, but I live in Polis.”

“I didn’t,” she said as they walked over to his car. She expressed her surprise at his weekly commute – Polis was 45 minutes away on a good day, an hour with traffic – but he’d never minded. Not as long as he had NPR or a good audiobook.

And as he glanced over at her in the passenger seat, heard the click as she secured her seat belt, he was reminded of another reason he didn’t mind the commute.

But those, he reminded himself, were the things he could never say.

“Ready?” he asked, turning the key in the ignition and hearing the sweet sound of his engine roaring to life. Thank God.

“To go get groceries?” she asked with a tiny chuckle, her left eyebrow quirked just a fraction, and he groaned internally. How many times could he stick his foot in his mouth during the course of one conversation? “I think I’m up for the challenge, Marcus.”


	5. Of Car Radios and Tomato Sauce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT’S A KABBY BOTTLE CHAPTER, YAY! Also, if you haven’t heard the song in this chapter, listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpakvW9Dqvo. I love it so much. <3 
> 
> Kudos and comments make the world go ‘round! *smiles sheepishly* Okay, enough of my rambling. Have some Kabby.

“I haven’t even thought about what to make,” Abby said as they drove, her tone edging ever closer to despair.

“Well, what’s your favorite recipe?” Marcus asked. It was an innocent enough question – he hadn’t had any ulterior motives in asking it – but all the same, she shot him a glare.

“I don’t cook often,” she admitted, turning to stare out her window as the white-coated world whizzed by. The roads were icy, and she wasn’t helping his concentration. Needless to say, speed limits weren’t being obeyed. “I don’t have time.”

“Okay,” he conceded, understanding as he softened his tone. She only had one free period during the day, and the rest she spent teaching. It was fair to assume she’d have a lot of work, papers to grade, lessons to organize. But that didn’t help them with her current predicament. “Is there anything you know you’re good at, then?”

Another glare. “I’m not completely _incompetent_ , Marcus,” she said. “I know my way around the kitchen. It’s just that for years, cooking was Jake’s thing. He loved it. So I let him do it, and now I’m out of practice.”

There was an implication hiding in her words, a confession on which he had no desire to shine a light. But she’d said it as clearly in her silence as if she’d shouted it from Arkadia’s rooftops: cooking was _Jake’s_ thing. And because it was Jake’s thing, setting foot in her kitchen probably felt something akin to taking a burning match to her skin.

The question on the tip of his tongue was whether or not she wanted him to take the reins on this. If she wanted him to make the meal. Like Jake, Marcus loved cooking. He often busied himself in the evenings with making elaborate, time-consuming meals; his apartment was too empty and quiet to come home and sit around after going to the gym. So he sunk his time into his kitchen, into ovens and graters and cutting boards and pans. And he had to admit, he was good at it.

But if he knew Abby Griffin even half as well as he thought, she wouldn’t be allowing anyone else to help her. Even if it took the rest of the night, even if she and Raven and Clarke were sitting down to dinner at midnight, she would make the meal by herself. Because Abby Griffin didn’t ask for help.

Doing his best to keep his eyes on the road, Marcus asked her yet another question.

“What do you feel most comfortable making, then?”

She was quiet for a few moments, lost in thought. Then, “I used to cook spaghetti on my nights off from the hospital. Clarke and Jake loved it, and I think Raven came over once when we had it.”

“Do you think you could do that again?” he asked, slowing the car to a stop at a red light.

“Probably,” she said, although he’d forgotten his question. “I still remember the ingredients, so that’ll help, too.”

The light turned green, and Marcus nodded. “It will.”

He had no doubt that even if she’d forgotten the recipe, she’d find a way to make it work.

“Anywhere special you usually go for groceries?” he asked. He typically went to the Polis Public Market, but that was more than likely closed for the day and – he did some calculations – over an hour away. He wasn’t familiar with the stores in Arkadia, and hoped she’d at least give him a specific place to go. Otherwise, they might end up getting lost instead of getting groceries.

“Most of the places around here are good,” she said, and his stomach sank.

“Abby, I’m not from Arkadia,” he admitted as he slammed on the brakes, determined not to run the freshly-turned red light. He couldn’t help feeling a bit surprised she’d already forgotten. Was he the _only_ teacher at that school from Polis? “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Oh,” she said, her tone unreadable as she gazed out the window. The light turned green and his nerves kicked into high gear; she needed to tell him where to go, and soon. “Well, Arkadia Market’s only five minutes from here,” she said, after what felt like an eternity. “Turn left at the light.”

He guided his car into the correct lane, and, after taking a glance at the traffic light, slowed to a stop in the slush. Of course. Of course he’d sail home in a beacon of green every night after work, but he’d hit every single red light in Arkadia when Abby was in his car.

They were quiet for the duration of the light, caught in their own little worlds. Abby was doing her best to remember the brand of spaghetti sauce she usually bought, the one that Clarke once said she could eat straight from the jar, and trying to stop the hollow feeling in her chest from expanding when she thought about making dinner with the pots and pans her husband’s hands had once held.

Marcus was doing his best to act completely natural, relaxed, calm; much easier said than done. Although he hadn’t the slightest idea where he was going or what they were going to buy when they got there, or how to jumpstart a car battery (he’d dug himself into a hole on that one, that much he knew for certain) he insisted everything was fine. Abby could get him to this ‘Arkadia Market’, she knew what she needed for her recipe, and Google would help him with the car. At least, he hoped.

Then, suddenly, Abby broke the silence.

“I wonder what _Mr. Kane_ listens to on the drive from Polis?” Abby mused wryly, her fingers hovering over the button to turn on his radio. Honestly, Marcus didn’t remember what he’d been listening to this morning. He’d finished his audiobook, NPR wasn’t exceptionally interesting…music, he decided. Probably music. But what if she hated it? What if she heard what he listened to and…?

It was decided. She wasn’t turning on that radio.

“It’s nothing great,” he said, doing his best to sound tranquil yet convincing as his heart pounded in his chest. “Really, Abby. We don’t have to-“

But she’d already pressed the button, her mouth set into her signature smirk, and music flooded through the speakers like the heat from the vents. _Shit._

The beginning of the song was a soft bass intro and Abby spoke over the tones, her voice oddly tight.

“Turn right up here,” she said, gesturing to the upcoming intersection. “We should be almost there.”

Marcus recognized the song immediately, felt an electric shock course through him as the lead singer crooned the words he knew were coming.

_“See the stone set in your eyes, see the thorn twist in your side. I wait for you…”_

As the car sped down Arkadia’s main road, nearly empty in the wake of the storm, Marcus stole a glance at his passenger. Her elbow was propped against the side of his door, her hand against her head. She leaned against it as they drove, her silhouette serving as a constant in the swirl of changing landscapes, of snow-covered trees and icicle-laden storefronts. At some point she must have undone the first few buttons of her jacket (had he made it too warm? Should he turn down the heat?) because her necklace was completely visible now, Jake’s ring glowing red-orange in the setting sun.

And she was smiling but her eyes were sad, her humor undeniably dampened, and he wondered if the song had some unspoken meaning to her. For his part, Marcus had always enjoyed U2’s music. Beautiful Day, Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Bullet the Blue Sky, Where The Streets Have No Name…they were all regulars on his morning pre-work playlists. For the most part, he enjoyed the lyrics’ ambiguity, the lack of one clear interpretation. There was something poetic in that, he thought.

But now, with Bono’s voice crooning smoothly through his car against the backdrop of the snow-blanketed city, he wondered if this song was starting to make sense.

_“Sleight of hand and twist of fate, on a bed of nails she makes me wait. And I wait, without you…”_

Another quick glance, this one taking his breath away, constricting his lungs. How could he have been so cruel to her for all those months? Slamming her door, yelling at her about her class, about her tardiness, about moving the dates of tests…could it all have been a front, a mirage he concocted to disguise his conflicting emotions? Had he realized he felt too many things for the woman sitting to his right, things that complicated his bachelor-style life in the penthouse apartment of Polis’ veritable skyscraper, so he squelched all emotions that weren’t anger?

And for that matter, why had he been so angry in the first place?

Marcus thought he might have the answer to that, but didn’t feel like asking the right question. Not right now. Right now, all he knew was that he was en route to a grocery store he wouldn’t have known from any other of the nameless buildings that passed them by, Abby was sitting next to him with a strange wistfulness he’d never seen in her before, and his heart was making a valiant attempt to crawl up his throat and lodge itself in his mouth.

_“With or without you…with or without you…”_

The heat was turned up too damn high in this car.

He reached over to turn it down a few notches, his eyes coming to rest on the ring around Abby’s neck. A ring that symbolized the man she’d never stopped loving, the man she’d never stop loving, a man who was better than Marcus in every way imaginable.

After all, Jake Griffin hadn’t isolated himself in a penthouse apartment for the better part of 30 years, content to submerge himself in the fast-paced world of city business and governmental negotiations. He hadn’t sacrificed almost every personal relationship he’d ever had, including with his mother - and he’d never be able to repair that one now - to continue climbing the corporate ladder. And he certainly hadn’t spent months berating the woman who existed only to help people; her students, fellow teachers, anyone who needed her assistance.

If Abby were ready to love again, he thought, she wouldn’t love him. Not after Jake.

“Marcus!” she exclaimed, and he jumped. “That’s a red light!”

He slammed on the brakes, gritted his teeth as the tired skidded against the ice and packed-down snow. _You idiot,_ he chastised himself, temporarily forgetting the song that still hummed through the car’s electrified atmosphere. _If you really cared for her, you’d pay attention when you’re driving._

They both breathed a sigh of relief when the car’s momentum halted, but the peace was temporary.

“Are you okay?” Abby asked, her concern apparent in the strain of her voice, the tiny frown she only wore when she wasn’t upset, just worried.

“Yes,” he answered a little too quickly, still shaken from his ruminations. “I’m fine.”

“Well, you missed the turn,” she said. To her credit, she didn’t sound annoyed or frustrated; only mystified. The Marcus Kane she knew didn’t miss turns or almost run red lights…something was amiss, but she decided not to pursue it. The Marcus Kane she knew wasn’t great with discussing his emotions, either.

He wasn’t surprised he missed it. He was embarrassed, but not surprised.

“I’ll turn around up here,” Marcus said, gesturing to an empty parking lot.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Abby responded, and silence swept over them again.

_“I can’t live…with or without you…”_

He looked to the left and right before guiding the car into the lot, taking the motion as an excuse to look at her one more time. Had he ever stopped to think about just how strong she was? She’d lost the man to whom she’d been married for over 20 years, the man she loved with all her heart, and instead of allowing herself to melt under grief’s sorrowful gaze she grew stronger. She kept going. She provided for her daughter.

Her students gave her a hard time, sure, but they adored her. The subjects she taught – Anatomy and Biology – could be tedious, boring, complicated…but she made them interesting. Or at least, that was what he’d gathered from various snippets of hallway chatter.

In circumstances under which lesser women would have broken, Abby Griffin didn’t even bend. But perhaps, he thought, that was her modus operandi. Whether with test dates, a broken car battery, a dinner she wasn’t sure how to prepare, or a man she’d likely despised for most of their time working together, Abby Griffin didn’t bend.

How could he ever think a woman like her would want a man like him? She was a diamond and he was a chunk of coal.

_“With or without you, oh…I can’t live, with or without you…”_

“You have good taste in music,” she remarked to the road, the pavement matted with gray slush and salt, withholding eye contact as she spoke into the abyss. Marcus sensed a difference between her words and her implication; something was off in her tone, in the distant look in her eyes, but he didn’t press her on it. The last thing he needed to do was cause her more stress on a day that had already shoved her to the ground…twice.

“Thank you,” he said as they turned into Arkadia Market. “It’s one of my favorites.”

He found a parking spot in the front of the lot, silently thanking the storm for emptying the store. They wouldn’t have to wait in long checkout lines or shove their way through aisles.

Abby turned off the radio as soon as the song ended, her hand darting forward in a blur, as if her getting groceries were somehow contingent on turning off the music. She then sighed deeply and began re-buttoning her coat, still not making eye contact with him. There was no denying it now: something was wrong. Should he not have let her turn on the radio?

“Abby, are you all right?” he asked, hoping to get the problem resolved before they exited his car. If they didn’t, walking together down the aisles and picking out ingredients would be the equivalent of listening to the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard for a half-hour.

Maybe she didn’t want him to come with her. Sure, they’d had a pleasant conversation this morning, but one conversation didn’t erase the months of awfulness he’d imposed upon her. Perhaps this rapid transition to friend from foe – he cringed – was too much for her. He wouldn’t blame her if it were.

“If you don’t want me to come in, I-“

She looked at him then, her chocolate eyes churning with a mixture of emotions he couldn’t quite identify. He thought he saw sadness, maybe guilt, a hint of regret. Certainly this wasn’t still about last Friday. Even when she’d come to see him earlier in the week, she hadn’t been upset; if anything, she’d been embarrassed. No, he had to have caused this somehow, something between his offer to help her and their arrival had brought this on. The thought made his stomach sink.

And despite it all, her voice was steady as it had ever been.

“This has nothing to do with you,” she said plainly, her left hand playing with the ring around her neck, staring at him as if it should have been obvious he’d done nothing wrong. As if he never should have asked.

Then she looked away, opened the door, and disappeared into the parking lot.

Relieved and somehow not relieved at all, Marcus stepped out of his car and closed the door, locking his vehicle with the song still echoing in his head. It continued rattling around despite his best attempts to push it away, and he glanced at her one more time through the window.

_I can’t live, with or without you…_

* * *

 

“So, what do you need?” he asked as soon as they entered the store. He insisted on pushing the cart, much to Abby’s apparent disapproval – she’d said she could handle it, he’d said just because she _could_ handle it didn’t mean she _had to_ – and that, in summary, was about representative of how their trip was going.

“Angel hair pasta,” she said, almost shouting to be heard over the cart’s squeaky wheel. “Spaghetti sauce, ground beef, diced tomatoes, an onion…and I know there were a few spices, but I think I still have those at home.”

He nodded, kept pushing the cart as she walked ahead of him.

_Fingernails on a chalkboard._

She said it wasn’t his fault – specifically, that ‘this had nothing to do with him’ – but why didn’t he believe her? She’d been happy enough when she got in his car, but once the song played it was all downhill. He’d seen her drunk, he’d seen her happy, he’d seen her angry, he’d seen her embarrassed and grateful, but he’d never seen her like _this_. He’d never seen her so withdrawn, quiet, contemplative.

It was, he thought, equal parts confusing and unnerving. Every cell in his body ached to just walk up to her and apologize for something he apparently hadn’t done, just because he couldn’t believe it truly wasn’t his fault.

He yearned to be someone she could talk to about things that bothered her, instead of a man who she probably thought did nice things for her occasionally because they both felt awfully embarrassed about making out on their co-workers couch.

She dropped a package of noodles into the cart, and he ran phrases through his head over and over again until they began to lose their meanings.

_Abby, I know you’re not okay. I’m sorry if it was something I did._

_Do you want to talk about it?_

_You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I’ll listen if you do._

There was a balance between supportive and pleading, he thought, and he wasn’t finding it. At all.

They came to a stop in front of a floor-to-ceiling display of pasta sauce after visiting the canned tomatoes and ground beef sections in complete silence. And finally, she spoke.

“Damn,” she muttered. “I don’t remember which one Clarke likes.”

“Well, at least you have options,” he said, a feeble attempt at a joke. He knew it was weak, but she gave him a shaky smile that lit him up from the inside and spread warmth the length of his body. _She smiled._

“Which one do you usually buy?” she asked, standing still as a statue in the center of the display. “Or do you get something fancy from the organic stores in Polis?”

He did, in fact, get something fancy from the organic stores in Polis. There was nothing wrong, he figured, with spending a little more money to get quality ingredients – after all, it wasn’t like his money was being spent on anyone but himself. But he’d be damned if he told her about his choices in pasta sauce now.

“Uh,” he stuttered, trying to analyze every label and pick something that didn’t sound too outlandish or too vague for him to use. “I usually get that one,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the first one he landed on that sounded good. “The, um, Tomato Basil Garlic.”

“Really?” she asked, and he was relieved to find her smirk returning. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a ‘Tomato Basil Garlic’ type, Marcus Kane.”

He feigned offense, raising his eyebrows and giving a semi-dramatic gasp that made shoppers around them stare.

“And why not?” he asked as she plucked a jar of “his” sauce from the shelf, depositing it in the cart in one fluid motion.

“I thought you were the type to add your own basil and garlic,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d rely on the sauce for that.”

She was, of course, right. Marcus Kane would sooner not make spaghetti than get his basil and garlic from a sauce. But again, these were the things she didn’t need to know. Not right now, at least. Maybe not ever.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Abby Griffin,” he said. “Including my tomato sauce preferences.”

He’d only meant to continue the joke, to keep whatever lighthearted humor they had from dissipating, but her smile evaporated.

“I think that’s everything I need,” she said, and just like that, the magic was gone. _Dammit._

Fingernails on a chalkboard again. As she approached the checkout line with him in tow, he imagined a few more things he could ask her. Ways to tell what was on her mind.

_What’s bothering you, Abby?_

_If I can help, let me know._

Then they got to the front of the line, and things changed. Rapidly.

“Hey, Mrs. Griffin!” a voice exclaimed, and Marcus found himself face-to-face with Monty Green. “And Mr. Kane! Whoa!”

He saw Abby’s shoulders rise and fall beneath the layers of her wool jacket, realized she was composing herself, doing everything in her power to keep calm. Monty had always been a good student in his class, but apparently he and Jasper Jordan were a toxic combination.

“Hello, Monty,” Abby said, her voice normal. A little too normal, a little too flat, a little too unemotional to pass for her everyday tone. But Monty, he thought, probably wouldn’t notice. He began scanning the items, making small talk with his Anatomy teacher as the computer displayed her total.

“Have you graded the lab reports yet?”

“I’ll be finishing them this weekend, Monty.”

“Oh. Okay. Because I’m _pretty_ sure I followed the instructions, but my introduction probably could have been better.”

“You have an A in my class, Monty. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

Her student beamed as he scanned the last item, the package of ground beef. “Thanks, Mrs. Griffin. I’m doing my best.”

“Well, it shows,” she said. “If you could convince your friend Jasper to do that…” she trailed off, and Monty laughed.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice suddenly tense. “He’s focused on a few other things besides school. Friends and all that. Speaking of which, do you guys hang out often?”

Another deep breath from Abby, a nearly inaudible sigh.

“Sorry, I forgot about what Murphy said today,” Monty blurted, seemingly recognizing the cause of her agitation. “It doesn’t matter if you guys hang out or not. It’s just that we all thought you hated each other, and-”

“We don’t hate each other,” Abby interrupted as soon as the words came out of Monty’s mouth, and Marcus had to make a gallant effort to keep his jaw from dropping. “Mr. Kane and I are…friends.”

Friends. Well, she must not hate him, then. If she’d wanted to shirk any association with him, this would’ve been the time to do it. But she didn’t.

_Friends._

“That’s great,” Monty said after announcing her total. “I bet that makes being across the hall from each other a lot easier.”

“It does,” Marcus added, and Abby gave him a smile. He wondered if it was real, or just for show. Just because they were in the presence of a student. How could he tell? Was there a way to know for sure?

“Well, I have to get home,” Abby said. “I’m making dinner for Clarke and her friend tonight.”

“Is it Raven?” Monty asked, and Abby gave a subtle nod. “Tell her I say hi!” he exclaimed, and Abby laughed.

“I will,” she promised, and Monty cheered. “Have a good night, Monty.”

“You too, Mrs. Griffin. And Mr. Kane.”

He offered to help her carry her bags after returning the cart, but she refused.

“I have two bags, Marcus. I’m fine.”

And just like that, her good humor was expunged.

_You can talk to me, Abby. If you want. Or if not that’s fine, too. I just don’t like seeing you upset._

That wasn’t going to work, either.

He opened his trunk, she put the bags in the back, and they got back in the car.

“I’m probably going to have to drop you off at your house,” he said, trying desperately to ignore whatever tension her mood was creating in the atmosphere of his all-too-tiny vehicle. But it filled the space like a gas, like a poison, and it got in his veins, crawled under his skin. “Unless you want me to-“

“Marcus, I’m sorry,” she blurted, and he shut his mouth so quickly that he bit his tongue. “I know I haven’t been myself tonight.”

“You’re stressed,” he offered. “It’s been a long day. I understand.”

“No,” she insisted. “It isn’t that, and it isn’t you, it isn’t Murphy, and it isn’t the damn car.” She took a deep breath, smoothed her hair away from her face. Even though he could barely see her in the falling night, he could tell her expression was pained. “That was Jake’s favorite song, the one that played before. And that, and the cooking…it wasn’t a good combination.”

He inhaled sharply, regret numbing all his senses. He hadn’t known, of course, but he should have _known_. He should have seen the effect it had on her and changed the station. He should have let Bono’s voice ring for someone else’s ears but not hers, not then, not when she’d already been given a reminder of her husband with memories of his cooking.

So they sat in his car in the parking lot, moving quickly and nowhere at all. Part of him couldn’t believe she trusted him with this information – with something so deep and personal – and part of him was so aglow in relief that she did that it balanced his emotions to a neutral.  

“I’m sorry-“ he started, but she silenced him with a gesture of her hand.

“Don’t apologize,” she asserted, firm. “You didn’t know.”

“I wish you’d told me,” he said. “That isn’t the only radio station I listen to, you know.”

She gave a tiny laugh, and even in the twilight her smile was radiant, brighter than the sea of streetlights that lit the road beyond them and the neon signs that advertised other businesses along it. Even in sadness, she was bright, glowing.

“Maybe we should listen to a different one this time?” she suggested, and he nodded.

“I think that would be a good idea,” he said. “Feel free to change it as you like.”

“Thank you,” she said, and he was surprised to find her eyes shining with tears unshed. The sight felt like something was clawing at his chest, and he yearned to be able to hold her, to comfort her, to tell her everything was going to be all right. “For everything. For taking me here, for offering to fix my car…I didn’t expect any of this, Marcus. Especially not after what happened a week ago.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for,” he insisted. “I didn’t have any elaborate plans, Abby. You’re not keeping me from anything. This is the most exciting Thursday I’ve had in months, actually.”

Her smile matured to a full-blown grin, and she dropped her chin to her chest to hide it. “Me, too.”

Then he was smiling and the only thing that existed in this universe was Abigail Griffin, the only woman with the power to simultaneously freeze him as thoroughly as the icicles outside and melt him like a summer’s day. It was intoxicating, being with her, and yet…she’d never be his. For a variety of reasons, reasons beginning with Jake and ending with Marcus himself.

Tonight had proven she was Jake’s, still, probably always, and he couldn’t fault her for that. Jake Griffin had been a good man, better than Marcus would ever be.

Jake Griffin would never have gotten drunk and been, quite literally, minutes away from making love to her while they were both intoxicated and beyond thinking about their actions. He was too honorable to put them both at risk in that manner.

Marcus Kane, apparently, wasn’t. And while she clearly wasn’t repulsed by him, that didn’t mean she felt anything beyond gratitude for what he’d done for her. It was enough, he consoled himself, to know she considered them friends. That their animosity had vanished.

He could live with that, couldn’t he? It might not matter if he could: he’d have to. This was not a short answer question. This was a multiple choice with one right answer, and his mind knew the correct response. Unfortunately, his heart was hell-bent on arguing.

She gave him directions to her home, step by step, and they drove in a comfortable silence mediated by songs they both seemed to enjoy. He caught her singing along a few times, her voice soft and rich, velvety and smooth. Content to listen to her, he didn’t feel the need to join in.

But all too soon the commercials invaded, and she turned down the volume.

“We’re almost there,” she announced. “You’re looking for house 309.”

House 309 was a sweet, two-level white home with a lower level made of red brick and a porch with a built-in swing. Vines crawled up the left, side, infusing the place with a sort of keen vitality, an energy, a liveliness. It wasn’t large, it didn’t call attention to itself, but Marcus thought it was its own kind of beautiful.

Which made sense, he thought, looking at its owner.

“I’ll be back in a few hours with your car,” he said, and she gave him another thousand-watt smile.

“You’re welcome to stay for dinner,” she said. “I don’t think Clarke and Raven would mind. It’s the least I can do after all your help.”

Marcus started to refuse, but Abby seemed to sense his hesitation.

“At least say you’ll think about it,” she insisted, opening the trunk and retrieving her bags. “Honestly, Marcus, what were you going to eat tonight when you were done with all this? You’re not going to have time to cook anything. ”

He had a leftover balsamic-glazed salmon fillet waiting for him in his refrigerator, but she didn’t need to know that. Besides, shouldn’t he taste his own tomato sauce?

So he said the only thing he could say with Abby Griffin’s brown eyes fixed on him, pleading with him.

“I’ll think about it.”


	6. Of Hugs and Mechanics

As soon as Abby opened the door, Clarke was waiting for her.

“Did you get my text?” she asked, her eyebrows raised, her shoulders a stiff line. Apparently, something had happened to make her nervous…the question was, what?

And Abby couldn’t help feeling a little guilty – she’d turned her phone on silent during the day and shoved it in her bag, her intent had never been to ignore her daughter – but all the same, there was a text that had gone unanswered. A communication she should have seen.

“No, honey, I didn’t,” Abby said, setting her bags down on the rug before pulling off her boots and discarding them next to the door. “I didn’t hear it come through, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Clarke said, stepping forward to pick up the bags. Abby smiled, thankful for her help. “I was just wondering where you were. Usually you would’ve been home by now.”

_If my car had started, I would have been._

There was another reason she hadn’t come home right away, but she wasn’t ready to admit that to herself. Not yet. Not when she still had an entire dinner waiting to be made.

“The battery died in the Toyota,” she said as they walked into the kitchen. “Marcus was leaving as I was going to the car, so he offered to take me grocery shopping.”

Clarke deposited the materials on the kitchen table, dumping them unceremoniously onto the surface with a _thud_. “How was that? Shopping with Kane, I mean.”

 _Kane._ Abby often forgot that to her daughter, Marcus was still ‘Kane.’ To Clarke, he wasn’t the man who helped her up when she fell and had incredible taste in music and offered to fix her car and made stupid jokes about pasta sauce that made her laugh even though her heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vise. To Clarke he was her AP Gov teacher, the most difficult instructor in the school, and, most prominently, the man she’d found half-naked on a couch with her mom.

“It was fine,” she said, preparing to elaborate if she had to. “We went to Arkadia Market, and-“

“You’re making spaghetti?” Clarke exclaimed, running around the table to give her mom a brief, but tight, hug. Abby hugged her back, relishing the feeling that came with her daughter’s outward display of affection.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know Clarke cared – of course she did, they texted each other throughout the day, they were as close as Abby figured could be expected given that she was a 17-year-old girl – but she was _busy_. Student council elections and other various duties kept them apart for the better portion of the day, and often if she didn’t see Clarke at dinner she wouldn’t see her at all. As happy as she was for her with her activities (and Lexa, she didn’t mind Lexa now that she’d proven she cared), her absence often left a hole in her heart.

After all, she’d always thought that was time she’d be able to spend with Jake. When Clarke grew up and didn’t have use for her mom anymore, she and Jake would sit around and watch TV together on the couch, him deeply emotionally invested in whatever sports game was happening (Abby didn’t keep up with sports, she didn’t have the time or interest) and her grading lab reports with her feet in his lap. And at some point he’d cheer, and she’d drop her pen in surprise, and they’d both end up laughing and she’d lean over and kiss him and he’d kiss her back and no, she wouldn’t be handing back those lab reports tomorrow, much to Monty’s chagrin.

The accident changed all that.

The accident had taken her picture-perfect life and torn the canvas down the center. Instead of coming home to lights on in the hallway and his usual “hey honey, how was your day?” she came home to darkness only punctuated by whatever dim light shone through the bay window. The shadows in the house felt heavier without him, the lights less bright, the stairs taller and steeper, the bed stiff like a wooden board. That, Abby figured, was the dark side of having a soul mate. They were the light of your life, but what happened when that flame was extinguished?

She knew all too well.

An image of Marcus flashed before her – Marcus standing next to her in the parking lot, wearing his long wool coat that looked like it’d been ripped from the pages of a Men’s Warehouse catalog – and she blinked, wondering where that had come from. Thinking about what happened on the couch was nothing new, but just thinking about him…that was unusual.

Or was it? It wasn’t like her thoughts had never drifted to him before. When her thoughts got bored with roaming around her empty house, searching for a man she knew she’d never see again, they often found solace in Marcus Kane. Wondering what happened in his life to make him so goddamn cruel. Wondering how a man like that chose teaching as a profession in the first place. Wondering why he couldn’t just leave her alone. No, she’d thought about Marcus before they’d gotten drunk together. They just hadn’t been pleasant thoughts.

Through it all, she had to grudgingly admit he was attractive. Even when he was an ass. It was obvious that he worked out – probably at one of those fancy Polis gyms that always had new equipment, one of the ones with outrageously high membership fees – and her co-workers took notice. More than once, she had to remind Callie she was staring.

“Callie,” she hissed once, during a meeting that had become particularly coma-inducing. Abby had zoned out while counting the bricks on the wall, but her friend had fixated on the man across the room from her…Marcus Kane. _Ugh. No._ “Don’t bother. He’s an asshole.”

“Too bad,” Callie had said in a pained whisper, and looked away.

_Too bad, indeed._

But that had been only a month or two after the accident, and Abby wouldn’t be looking at men like that for quite some time. Even now, she wasn’t sure what she wanted. Her heart told her one thing and her head told her another, and her churning stomach wanted them both to shut the hell up.

Why couldn’t she stop seeing Marcus Kane’s goddamn smile? Why was it always so easy to smile around him now? Why was everything he said either outrageously funny or almost uncomfortably insightful, on-the-nose accurate?

But these were not subject to discuss with her daughter, who was so excited over the prospect of eating her favorite meal again that she’d run around the table to give her mom a hug. Those were not words she needed to hear, not right now, probably not ever.

After all, what could happen between she and Marcus that wouldn’t risk both of their jobs? Put them at risk for being fired? Nothing.

Her head spun, her heart pounded, and her stomach lurched.

“Yes, honey,” Abby answered, mustering all the enthusiasm she had left through her haze of exhaustion. “I’m making spaghetti.”

Oblivious to her mother’s ruminations, Clarke let go and began rifling through the ingredients. When she made it to the pasta sauce, she frowned.

“Tomato Basil Garlic?” she asked, raising her eyebrows and giving her mother a sidelong glance. “You never used this before.”

 _Shit._ Well, that one definitely wasn’t her favorite.

“Marcus recommended it,” Abby said, moving to set pots and pans out on the counter and putting the meat in the refrigerator.

“Really?” Clarke said. “He seems like the type who-“

“Adds his own basil and garlic,” Abby finished, and Clarke grinned. “I know. I guess not.”

Clarke joined her in the kitchen, helping her set out all the necessary materials for the recipe. Abby remembered the steps by heart – a good thing, as it turned out, because she couldn’t find that damn recipe to save her life – but being in this kitchen without Jake just felt wrong, somehow. Hollow. Fake. Like everything was made of plastic instead of marble and wood and steel.

But looking at Clarke helped, talking to Clarke helped, and so she made an effort to keep a conversation flowing.

“How was your day?” she asked as she brought out the cutting board, preparing to peel the onion, remembering a funny anecdote Marcus had told her about wearing safety goggles to keep from crying while chopping one. She hadn’t been able to laugh then, his song still keeping hold over her emotions, but she couldn’t keep herself from smiling now.

“It was okay,” Clarke said. “I put up some campaign posters, and Lexa helped. And we got our tests back in Gov, the ones we took a month ago. It takes Kane _forever_ to grade short-answer questions. But I got an A anyway, so…”

 _She’s one of the best students in my class,_ Abby remembered him telling her. Apparently, he hadn’t been lying in an attempt to extend an olive branch, using her daughter’s intelligence to wave a white flag. She hadn’t suspected so, but it was nice to have proof.

“It’s good to have Raven back,” Clarke said. “Even if she’s only staying for a week.”

Abby nodded, taking a pot from the counter and filling it with water, then adding a pinch of salt – a trick Jake had taught her. “I didn’t expect her to come back. Airfare from California was probably expensive.”

“Yeah,” Clarke agreed. “She could help fix the car, if you need it. Is it still in the lot at school?” She pulled out her phone, began typing, hit send on a message she didn’t know was useless.

_Oh._

Clarke didn’t know Marcus was fixing the car.

She probably wouldn’t care, Abby knew. Clarke had her own life – her position as student body president, the upcoming election, Lexa – but she knew she missed Jake, too. It didn’t escape her how often she wore her father’s old watch to school, a piece her father had given her to “remember him” when he left for a week on a business trip. It was the only time he ever left home for that long; after that, he’d told his boss he needed to be kept in the building, in Arkadia. And Jake was important enough to the business that he’d agreed.

The watch might not have worked anymore, but it served its purpose.

Was Clarke okay with him? With Marcus? Would she care that he was fixing the car and taking her grocery shopping and making her smile? Granted, that was all they were doing and probably all they’d ever do. But…

 _It’s just a car_ , she told herself. _Just a stupid car._

Clarke wouldn’t care who was fixing it, as long as she didn’t have to take the bus to school or drive with her mom.

“Actually,” Abby said, “Marcus is fixing it.”

“ _Kane_?” Clarke said, astounded, her phone still in her hands. But she didn’t seem annoyed, which Abby took as a good sign. Surprise, she could handle. Anger, not so much. “Does he know what he’s doing? Raven could have it up and running in ten minutes, at most.”

“He knows what he’s doing,” Abby insisted, setting the pot on the stove and turning the dial. “He just has to drive home to get the cables. He should be back here with the car in a few hours.”

“A few hours? How far away does he live?” Clarke asked, bringing the meat out of the freezer and handing it to her. She accepted the package and opened it, discarding the plastic into the garbage can.

“He lives in Polis,” she said.

Clarke’s jaw dropped. “And he teaches _here_ ,” she said. “That’s a time commitment.”

Abby gave a tiny shrug, dropping the meat into the pan and breaking it into smaller pieces with a spatula. It started sizzling faintly, and she shoved it around with the same utensil. “I’m sure he has his reasons.”

Clarke’s phone buzzed, and she paused chopping the onion to take a look. When she read what was on the screen, she groaned.

“Everything okay?” Abby asked, and Clarke shook her head.

“Raven said she’s going to be late,” she said. “At least a half-hour.”

_And she couldn’t have told us before now? Now that we’ve started dinner?_

Abby didn’t often get angry, but she was a bit annoyed with Raven’s lack of courtesy. It would be quite a challenge to keep the food hot until she arrived – she and Clarke had had everything timed so the pasta would be finished as soon as she arrived.

“Sorry, mom,” Clarke said, her voice full of genuine regret. “I know this isn’t going how you planned.”

_This whole day hasn’t gone how I planned. I should have expected this._

And what was Raven doing that she’d be a half-hour late, anyway?

 

* * *

 

“You’re doing it wrong.”

Marcus froze, his hands on the jumper cables he’d only moments ago unwrapped from their packaging. Thank God, he’d thought, that there was a hardware store right down the street from Arkadia High – otherwise, he had no idea where he was going to buy them. He’d used the keys Abby gave him to open her car and opened the hood rather easily, but the rest…it was Greek to him.

But more importantly, who the hell had come to the Arkadia parking lot at 7 at night to tell him he was jumpstarting Abby’s car wrong? According to Google, he just had to connect that cable there on her car, and the other one there on his car, and…why were there so many cables? Why did it matter where they were connected? And why the hell did her car have to stall in the middle of January?

He turned around under the glowing streetlight to find the source of the voice, and when he did, he stiffened.

“Raven?” he said, frowning as he looked from his watch to her smirking face and back to the cars, neither of which would be moving anytime soon. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Abby’s?”

“Yeah,” she acknowledged, her boots crunching on the snow as she stepped forward, her bronze skin glowing in the artificial light, her hands in her pockets. “But I saw you from the road, and I’m not gonna let you die for the sake of your midlife crisis-initiated lust or infatuation or whatever the fuck you and Abby are up to.”

He sighed, his breath a cloud of mist under the twinkling winter stars. He’d never had Raven in any of his classes, but he remembered her by her reputation. To everyone but Jacopo Sinclair, she was a bit of a rebel; always talking back, defying any authority figure within a ten-mile radius of her petite frame, always locked and loaded with an insult and a smirk. Raven Reyes was chaos walking.

“Abby and I aren’t ‘up to’ anything, Raven. We’re just friends.”

He couldn’t help but smile a little at the word she’d used to describe their relationship: friends. Who knew a week could change so much?

“Yeah, okay,” she said with an accompanying eye roll, leaning against the side of his car, her boot resting on the tire as she propped herself against it. “Are you gonna let me help, or would you rather freeze to death? Because the way I see it, those are your options, Kane.”

“I choose freezing to death.”

“No you don’t.”

_No, I don’t._

He dropped the cable, shoved his burning, freezing fingers into his pockets. His gloves had been too cumbersome to work with the cords, so he’d abandoned them to the leather interior of his car, where they were currently warming the passenger seat instead of his hands. Not for the first time, he wished he’d chosen to live somewhere warmer.

Then he thought about her, her smile, her laugh, and thought he might be happy enough where he was. But damn, why didn’t _she_ live somewhere warmer? If he survived this, he wasn’t setting foot outside for a week. Arkadia could find a substitute for his class.

“That’s what I thought,” Raven said, shoving him out of the way and picking up the cable with her fingerless-gloved hands. “You connected the positive side of your battery to…” she trailed off, moving to her car to check his miniscule progress. “Fucking nothing,” she finished. “It’s a good thing I got here when I did. Do you know anything about mechanics at all, Kane? God help you when your headlight burns out.”

He bit his lip, his tongue turning to lead. What _did_ you do when your headlight burned out?

“Raven, you should go,” he insisted as she continued working, connecting wires and shaking her head sadly. As much as he needed her help, Abby needed her to come over for dinner. She’d worked so hard on that meal, and she didn’t deserve to have it ruined because of his idiotic, ill-fated attempt at chivalry. “You’re supposed to be at Abby’s.”

“And you’re supposed to be at home, not in a high school parking lot with a college girl who knows more about cars than you ever will. But hey, that’s just the way the world works.”

At his appalled stare, she elaborated. “I texted Clarke, and I’m sure she told Abby. Everything’s cool. Calm your tits.”

She winked, and he frowned. What did that even _mean_? For a man who spent the majority of his life around high schoolers, he’d never understand their culture.

“I’m, uh…” he started, trailed off, and looked up at the moon. For such a frigid night, it was beautiful outside. He wondered if Abby thought so, too. Would she even have a chance to look at the stars tonight? Or was she so stressed about her dinner that she wouldn’t see anything but pots, pans, and spaghetti noodles. “I’m calm. I’m just not sure it’s good etiquette to-“

“Let me tell you something, Kane,” Raven said, walking back to Abby’s car for what had to be at least the third time. This was, he reflected, a more complicated process than Google had made it sound. “Abby would be a whole lot more pissed at me for letting her stupid boyfriend die than being a few minutes late to dinner.”

His.

Heart.

Stopped.

 _Boyfriend?_ Where had Raven gotten _that_ idea? They hadn’t even kissed. Hell, they hadn’t even held hands. For the majority of the night, they hadn’t even spoken. Sure, she sang along to songs in his car and seemed happy enough to be around him when things weren’t reminding her of Jake, but…

_Boyfriend?_

“Raven, we’re not dating,” he said, moving to stand beside her as if closing the distance would clarify his point. “Nothing has happened between us.”

She laughed, a short, loud sound that reminded him of the dinging of a bell in a clock tower. “Then what the fuck was last Friday night?”

His face, already flushed from the cold, turned a hue reminiscent of Abby’s coat. Certainly she wouldn’t have…

“Clarke told me,” she said, as if sensing his discomfort as she tugged on a cable, and he relaxed. “You guys really went for it.”

“We were drunk,” he said, already sick of talking about it. There was so much more to her than that moment, so much more to this week, than just that snapshot in time. Sure, it was one moment – a single picture – but this week had been an album of other moments, polaroid after polaroid of memories he couldn’t stop himself from replaying when he went home to his empty apartment, turned on the radio, and started cooking.

Raven made a noise that bore an uncanny resemblance to a game show buzzer. “ _Errrrrrrrr_ ,” she droned. “Heard that one before. Got another excuses you wanna try?”

He stared, wondering how this girl had ever befriended the straight-laced, student body president Clarke Griffin.

“It’s not an excuse,” he stuttered, shivering, suddenly thinking that freezing to death didn’t sound so bad. Once everything went numb, it was probably okay. There had to be a point where you didn’t feel anything, right? Such as the soul-crushing embarrassment he was experiencing right now, being cross-examined by a 19-year-old?

“That doesn’t explain why she lit up like a Christmas tree when I started talking about you,” she said. “That doesn’t sound like ‘I-fucked-up-and-had-a-one-night-stand, let’s-just-forget-it-ever-happened behavior. At least not to me. But I guess at your age, maybe things are different.”

“What do you mean, she ‘lit up’?” he asked, trying to sound casual and choosing to ignore her comment about his age. For the love of God, Raven could have used almost any other words in the English dictionary, and they would’ve been more descriptive than ‘lit up.’ It went without saying, he thought, that she wasn’t an English major. Then he remembered she was saving him from an icy demise, and kept his bitter thoughts to a minimum. Raven Reyes had her merits.

“You guys are actual teenagers. It’s unbelievable,” she said, and he didn’t have a response for that.

What did those words, those two little words, _mean_?

“Get in your car and start it up,” she ordered him. “I’ll tell you when you get out.”

Marcus had never run so quickly to his car in his life. He turned the key, starting the engine, and exited the vehicle in order to stand with Raven in the subzero temperatures, two figures standing in front of a pair of cars with their hands in their pockets and their minds on Abigail Griffin.

Somehow, it felt like it was warmer out there than it was in his car.

“I asked her about you today, and she got all blushy and awkward,” she revealed, and Marcus stiffened. ‘Blushy and awkward’ didn’t sound like Abby Griffin. “I have photo evidence to prove it.”

“I don’t need to see it,” Marcus said, and Raven withdrew the hand that had been making it way toward her jacket pocket. “Why do you think that means anything, Raven?”

The laugh, again. “You don’t get it. You really don’t get it. If she didn’t care, she would’ve been fine with talking about it. It’s been a few days. Life goes on. I think the average shelf life for a one-night-stand is…what, a day? Maybe two? Two if the sex was really great, but you guys didn’t even do it.”

Marcus wouldn’t have known. Not that he hadn’t had a couple of one-night stands when he was younger – the business world was laden with such experiences, although they always left him feeling emptier than when the previous night began. After a few, he began avoiding them altogether and accepted he would never be that kind of businessman. He’d leave that to others on higher rungs of the corporate ladder.

“My point is,” Raven continued, “She’s not over it. She still thinks about you. About what happened.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You guys are so stupid!” she exclaimed, walking over to his car and turning it off. “She hasn’t acted like this since Jake, at least according to Clarke. And I’m guessing, from the lack of a ring on your hand and the fact that your radio is set to fucking NPR, that you don’t have a secret girlfriend anywhere.”

He shook his head, unable to fight off a grin at the absurdity of the idea. Him? Secretly married? Sure.

“So what the hell are you doing?” she said, moving to stand in front of him. He could see it all in her eyes – her confusion at their inability to be together, her frustration for Abby, who apparently (he was guessing) was also her friend. “You’re not gonna live forever, you know.”

She asked him for the keys to Abby’s car, and he gave them to her without a second thought.

“It’s not that simple,” he said as she climbed in Abby’s car. “If anyone found out about Friday, we’d both lose our jobs.”

“Then make sure no one finds out about Friday,” Raven said with a shrug, slamming the car door as she turned the key. “That was a week ago, Kane. No one’s gonna go back a week in security footage unless they think they have a reason, and if you and Abby keep quiet, then how would they know?”

Marcus had never been so relieved to hear the sound of a motor in his life.

Raven kept the car running as she slid out the door, closing it behind her with a soft _click_.

“She’s not over Jake,” Marcus offered.

“She has feelings for you,” Raven responded, not missing a beat. “Look, I’m not telling you what to do,” she said, her tone changing from teasing exasperation to genuine earnestness. And this, he thought, was how she was friends with Clarke; not her attitude, her sarcasm, her biting tone, but this. Her authenticity. “But Abby’s not over Friday. Neither are you. You’re both lonely as hell, at least I’m assuming. So don’t you think that whatever’s going on might be worth exploring?”

He didn’t have an answer for that, and he got the feeling she didn’t expect him to. Instead she began disconnecting the cables, making short work of the connection between their cars. In less than two minutes Abby’s car was free to roam about the city, its engine purring with all the functionality of a new vehicle.

“You’re gonna have to come back for yours, and you need to drive that one for at least 15 minutes,” she said, pointing from his car to hers, and he nodded as if he knew exactly what she was talking about. As if he wasn’t just hearing this information for the first time because he never made it to the bottom of the Google lists to see what actually happened when the other car _started_. “After that, you’re free to go back to Abby’s and surprise her with this. Her knight in shining armor.”

She batted her eyelashes a few times for effect, and that Clarke Griffin-worthy earnestness was gone. But somehow, now, he found it more endearing than annoying. It was too bad, he thought, that Raven Reyes had never signed up for AP Government or Classic Literature.

“Raven?” he said, climbing in Abby’s car and adjusting the seat because dear Lord, she really was _tiny_. He’d practically taken a bite out of the steering wheel.

Clarke Griffin’s friend strode over to him as he rolled down the window, a tiny smile playing at the corner of her lips.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” he said, and he had a feeling she knew he wasn’t just thanking her for the car service.

“No problem,” she said, the left side of her mouth quirking toward the stars. “You’ll be getting my bill in a week. This kind of service doesn’t come cheap, Kane.”

He smiled, his mind wandering back to its favorite place with the woman with brown hair and brown eyes and a laugh like a warm blanket in a snowstorm, the woman who was about to get her car back thanks to his incompetence and Raven’s pity.

“No,” he smiled as he began to pull away. “I’d expect not.”


	7. Of Dinners and Dishwater

And so, 15 minutes later, Marcus Kane ended up back where he’d been an hour before: parked outside Abby Griffin’s house.

He’d had to park on the street – Raven’s car was in the driveway – and he paused for a moment, took in the warm light filtering from the windows that made the snow glimmer like a sand of diamonds. There was something inclusive, inviting about the atmosphere, something that hypnotized him and drew him in like a siren’s song. Something that made him feel guilty for his decision not to stay.

As he’d driven down Arkadia’s snow-lined streets he’d thought about it, and the more he thought the less it made sense for him to intrude. He didn’t know Raven half as well as Clarke and Abby did, and no matter how Raven insisted Abby felt about him the fact remained that she’d had a difficult night. Being in the kitchen, a place she associated so closely with Jake…he didn’t need to cause her any more stress. So he’d give her her keys, ask her to drive him to his car, and say goodnight.

And that was all.

So he trudged his way through the snow, fortifying his willpower with bars of steel, arming himself with some flimsy excuse of exhaustion or unfinished work. She wouldn’t accept that, he knew, but it was worth a try.

His finger found the cold plastic of the doorbell and he pressed down, hearing the melodic ding on the inside of the door. Footsteps sounded along with faint laughter, and when the door opened she stood on the other side.

And he froze.

He’d only ever seen Abby Griffin in work clothes; business casual button-down tops, pencil skirts, lab coats, her hair in a ponytail save for a few flyaway strands in the front. So he was entirely unprepared for the version of her that waited on the other side, the woman wearing jeans that hugged her slim, enticing figure and a loose-fitting black tee shirt, the woman whose hair cascaded down her shoulders like a waterfall save for the few sections she’d pulled back behind her head.

She smiled, and he was done for.

“Marcus,” she said, and it was all he could do to remember his own name over the all-consuming pounding of his heart. “Come in.”

“The car’s fixed,” he said numbly, registering how dizzy he’d suddenly become in her presence. Abby, oblivious to the ailments she’d caused him, closed the door after he entered and, in one swift motion, stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his cheek.

Marcus could barely breathe.

The kiss lasted only a second – it was meant as a gesture of thanks, not passion – but perhaps, he thought, that was for the better. His knees were already weak, and being this close to her, smelling the flowery scent of her perfume, feeling her fingers interlock with his and the gentle pressure of her lips on his skin…it was enough to send shockwaves of warmth pulsing the length of his body. She was, in a word, intoxicating.

Abby stepped away after a lifetime of a moment, looked at him as if gauging his reaction. He knew she had a tendency toward physical displays of affection – he’d seen her hugging Callie, Sinclair, even Thelonious on the rarest of occasions – but he could hardly believe she went around kissing anyone who’d done her a favor.

Maybe Raven was right.

Could Raven have been right?

His eyes flickered to her lips, if only for a heartbeat, remembering how it felt to kiss her. The taste of alcohol on her lips mixed with a sweet, fiery spiciness all her own, the irresistible pressure of her teeth on his lower lip, the faint moans that slipped from between her parted lips as she pressed him ever closer. And that memory was as addictive as it was elusive, as vibrant now as it had been only moments after Clarke and Lexa had discovered them.

“Thank you,” Abby said, her tiny hands still encompassed in his, and he briefly wondered how drunk he’d had to be in order to recite poetry in front of her. Considering that right now, almost every word he’d ever learned had decided to evacuate his brain, leaving him with only:

“Don’t mention it.”

Every single cell in his body was on fire, but she seemed not to notice his discomfort. And his brain, remarkably unhelpful, had decided to replay a chorus of _she kissed me_ on repeat, so he jettisoned its faltering logic for the time being.

“You’re staying for dinner?” she asked, and he opened his mouth but no words came out.

“I – Abby, I don’t know if –“

She grinned, dropping his hand to his side where it landed against his jacket with a thwap.

“It wasn’t a question, Marcus.”

And those five words were enough to melt his steely willpower, ripping the foundations from his carefully-constructed reasons not to enter her home and sit down and eat spaghetti with her and her daughter and the girl who really, really seemed to think he and Abby belonged together. Except she didn’t understand what was at stake, the scandal in which they could be caught if anyone decided to go and rewind those security tapes.

But the look on her face reminded him he had no choice, and he had yet to actually win an argument against Doctor Abigail Griffin.

And this argument might not have been one he wanted to win.

Amused, he shed his coat and handed it to her, pulling off his boots as she tossed his jacket over the wooden railing that bordered a carpeted staircase. Now that he could think clearly, having regained control of his senses, it registered to him that the house smelled like tomato sauce, like freshly-cooked beef, like…spaghetti. For a woman who said she didn’t cook, Abby certainly knew how to make a meal.

She led him into the kitchen, where Clarke and Raven sat at a circular wooden table, half-eaten plates of spaghetti in front of them. Clarke gave him a quick wave, and Raven flashed a smile.

“You’re early,” Abby remarked, having seemingly just noticed the time. “I thought you said you were going home first?”

“He must have really known what he was doing,” Raven offered, her tone carrying only the faintest hint of sarcasm. When Abby turned away to return to the stove, Marcus caught her wink. “I mean, I don’t even know if I could’ve gotten it done that quickly. Considering he lives all the way in _Polis_.”

She put strong emphasis on the last word, dragging out each syllable in a lofty tone. Marcus cringed; there was no way in hell Abby would believe he’d finished the car that quickly by himself. The last thing he wanted was for Abby to think he’d lied to her, especially when he’d had every intention of fixing it himself.

He gave Raven his best teacher glare, a look that would have made even Jasper Jordan sit down and close his mouth. But Raven, being Raven, appeared impervious to its effects as she smiled and continued slurping her spaghetti.

“Marcus, how much do you want?” she asked, motioning for him to join her at the stove. He swerved around the granite countertopped island still covered in onion peels and various cooking debris – apparently even with the extra half-hour they hadn’t had time to clean up. All things considered, Raven’s timing might have been perfect.

The temperature increased as he moved to her side, although he wondered how much of his reaction was physical and how much was mental. Being this close to her had brought back the tingling sensation to his cheek, to the place where her lips had met his skin, and he both wanted to pull her close and run away, to hold her and to put some much-needed distance between them.

“Earth to Marcus,” she said with a laugh, clicking the tongs directly in front of his face, and he jumped. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I guess the spaghetti have turned out better than I thought, if you’re _this_ affected by it.”

Oh, how he wished he could tell her what was really affecting him.

“It smells great,” he said instead, relegating himself to that fact that such words had no place here; at least not in front of her daughter and her best friend. Raven seemed to want them to talk about it, but he doubted she desired to hear the conversation. And Clarke? He had no idea how Clarke would react. If Abby seemed to not be fully over her husband, he could only imagine how Clarke felt about losing her father…

But that didn’t stop his unruly mind from wandering to areas it fully well knew were restricted. The cabinets and fan blocked Raven and Clarke’s view of them and muted anything they might say to each other, and it occurred to him that he could reach out and trail his fingers down the length of her arm, overlap their hands as he took the plate from her. There were a myriad of ways in which he could hint his feelings to her, all without saying a single word.

The thought flickered through his head briefly, joltingly, that he could even kiss her. She was so tantalizingly close, with her cashmere skin and velvet lips, and he’d only need to angle his head down to meet her mouth. Had she been wearing lipstick earlier? This looked like a different shade, a brighter red, the cinnamon crimson of a rose in bloom.

If she even wanted him to kiss her. Which, he reminded himself, was by no means a guarantee. Raven said one thing, and his head said another. Even indulging those fantasies was a slippery slope, one that had led him to a parking lot at night to fix her car and into Arkadia Market to be judged by Monty Green. Would she ever be, he wondered, more than just a fantasy?

“I’m honored you think so,” she said, the warmth in her words making the room ten degrees hotter. “Considering this is your pasta sauce, after all.”

He frowned for a split second, exhaustion muddying his recollection of earlier events. His pasta sauce? But he bought all his ingredients from… _oh. Right._

“And I’m sure you’ve done it justice,” he said, hoping she hadn’t noticed his brief slip. But she appeared distracted, stirring the simmering sauce with a metal spoon and then placing it back on the stovetop.

“Back to my question, though,” she said when she was done. “How much do you want?”

He looked at what was left, performing a few calculations. Raven and Clarke weren’t eating quickly, which either meant they’d already been back for seconds or had little intention of returning for more. It was doubtful that Abby had already eaten, and he needed to be certain to save enough for her to eat her fill. After the long day she’d had, she deserved as much as she wanted.

He wished she’d fill her own plate and leave him whatever was left – he had plenty of food at home. But he wasn’t about to deflect her question for a second time, so he guided her to cover his plate with a reasonable amount of noodles and sauce.

“What’s taking so _long_ over there?” Raven yelled, her tone both cocky and suggestive, and he could all but tell she was smirking. Clarke shushed her almost immediately, and the quiet that followed was only marred by the gentle humming of the fan.

Abby looked at him for a long moment, and for a heartbeat he almost wondered if she was going to kiss him again. She had that same look in her eyes; playful but withdrawn, curious but restrained, cheerful yet aching. They mirrored each other, he realized – in her eyes he saw his own conflicted feelings, and he was confident she glimpsed her own in his.

As he gratefully accepted his plate and strode back to join Clarke and Raven, he could’ve sworn he heard the young mechanic’s voice in his head, overpowering the constant humdrum of questions without answers. _What are you gonna do about it, Kane?_

What was he going to do about it?

Clearly, something had to be done. He couldn’t keep going like this, couldn’t keep feeling himself pulled toward her by every force in the natural world without knowing whether or not she felt for him, too. He was caught in her gravity, spiraling around and around and around, and he had the sinking feeling he wouldn’t be able to escape her pull even if he desired to.

He didn’t.

Raven gave him another pointed look as he sat down, as if to ask _‘did anything happen?’_ He offered her an almost imperceptible shake of his head, and she rolled her eyes.

_What are you gonna do about it?_

Abby joined them a few minutes later, her plate half-full. She either wasn’t hungry (highly unlikely, he thought) or she was nervous about something. If it was about him, his reaction to her meal, she had nothing about which to be worried.

“You didn’t have to wait for me,” she said, handing him a glass of water as she set her own down at the seat across from his. He hadn’t eaten anything before her: it just didn’t seem right.

“You made all this,” he said. “You shouldn’t be the last to enjoy it, Abby.”

The corners of her red lips turned upward in that smile that set his whole body on fire, the one that made him bite his bottom lip to counteract the rush of sheer sensation she swept over him.

“Well, you’re the one who fixed my car,” she said, ignoring Raven’s strategically-placed cough. “So I’d say that makes us even.”

He chuckled, taking a sip of water to wash down the spaghetti he hadn’t yet eaten. “It might. But you had a day, so I’d say that still puts you ahead of me. Probably 70-30.”

“Depends,” Abby retorted, not missing a beat. “How much do you have to grade when you get home?”

“I’m all caught up,” he said with a teasing smirk, and she groaned. But instead of responding, she opted to take her first bite of dinner, and Marcus followed suit.

“It’s like we’re not even here,” Clarke remarked in a whisper, and Raven nodded.

“Are you done?” she asked her friend, eyeing her mostly-vacant plate. “I’d really rather not be down here if they start making out again.”

“Yeah,” Clarke answered, finishing her noodles with a graceful bite instead of a slurp. She set her fork down on her plate quietly, both conflicted and enchanted (and a little embarrassed) by what was unfolding before them.

“Hey mom,” she said, loud enough for Abby to hear over whatever invisible force kept her and Kane from looking at anything besides each other. Her words broke the spell and she turned her head, appearing slightly guilty for having not included them in her conversation with Kane. But they’d talked before Marcus arrived, Raven had caught them up on all her college misadventures, and there was very little left to be said.

And Lexa’s words came drifting back to her: _why don’t you take a rest from worrying until we know there’s something to be concerned about?_

Observing her mom and Kane, the easy conversation between them, the spark in her eyes that Clarke had thought might have been forever snuffed out after her father’s passing…she’d begun to think her worries had been unfounded. Sure, Kane had been a jerk. But so had Lexa, once upon a time. And their relationship had worked out for the best.

So why couldn’t anything with Kane end up the same way?

It was time, she thought, to let her mother’s personal life be her mother’s. To stop worrying about things she couldn’t control. She glanced briefly at her father’s watch, heard it ticking faintly over the quiet hum of the stovetop fan, and realized all her father would have wanted was for her mom to be happy. And right now, teasing Kane as she sat across the table and gracefully ate her spaghetti, she was the happiest Clarke had seen her in months.

“Is it okay if Raven and I go back to her place for a little while?” Clarke asked. “She had some ideas for my campaign, but she left them on her laptop.”

It was a shaky limb onto which she was about to step, considering it was a school night and Abby usually insisted she get at _least_ eight hours of rest. But she knew if she and Raven were in the house, there was little to no chance anything was going to happen.

And the last thing Clarke Griffin needed was to walk in on her mom and Kane doing it on the desk in her classroom, or against the supply cabinet in his room, or something equally terrifying. She’d already been scarred for life.

“Clarke, it’s a school night,” Abby said, and Clarke had to close her eyes to keep them from focusing upward toward that familiar invisible dot on the ceiling that she found so often when her mom was being disagreeable. She was nothing if not predictable.

“It’s only 8:15,” she argued. “I’ll be back by ten, I promise. If I’m not, you can ground me for the rest of the year.”

Abby smiled, thinking of all the ways her daughter and Lexa and their friends would figure out ways around such a punishment. Yes, it was a school night. But to her knowledge Clarke didn’t have any tests tomorrow, and it was a special occasion: Raven was back in town.

And the thought of being alone with Marcus made her heart lodge in her throat while her stomach performed an elaborate series of flips that certainly would’ve qualified it for the Olympics.

“Please?” Clarke begged, her blue eyes wide, and Abby knew she wasn’t going to be able to say no. Not to that face, not with Raven’s identical expression, and not with Marcus Kane sitting a grand total of four feet away.

If this made her the equivalent of an irresponsible hormonal teenager, so be it.

“Okay,” she said, and Clarke and Raven cheered in unison. “But be back by ten.”

“I will,” Clarke said with a grin. “I promise.”

 

* * *

 

“You didn’t answer my question,” Abby said, and Marcus cringed.

“I’m not going to answer your question, Doctor Griffin.”

“Oh, come on,” she insisted, eyes sparkling with amusement. “I told you.”

“That’s only because I was there,” he said, avoiding all eye contact with the woman across the table. “If I hadn’t been there when you fell this morning, you’d be doing the same thing I am.”

“But I still told you,” she said, and he felt his resolve bending to her willpower. She was a force of nature, Abigail Griffin, and it was downright shameful how little effort it took on her part to mold him to her will. “Come on, Marcus. No excuses. What’s your most embarrassing work story?”

He knew, of course. He knew his most embarrassing story like the opening lines of Dickens’ Great Expectations, or the Preamble. It was in the forefront of his mind along with every word he’d said to her for the past week, but that didn’t mean this memory was one he desired to share.

_Damn you, Abby Griffin._

“ThetimeIgotpulledoverforspeeding,” he grumbled.

“What?” she asked, her brown eyes wide with feigned innocence. “You’re going to have to speak up, Marcus. The fan’s so _loud_.”

“The time I got pulled over for speeding,” he sighed, seeing no way around it. “And Monty and Jasper caught it on video, and apparently it surfaced on…whatever that website is that all the kids use. Face-something.”

Abby laughed until she was breathless, her obvious happiness making him grin in spite of his embarrassment. That sound was one of which he’d never tire: her laughter. Even if it was _at_ him, instead of _with_ him.

“Clarke showed me that video,” she gasped. “Monty and Jasper narrated it like a Discovery Channel special. It got over 100 likes.”

“Should I know what that means?” he asked, trying to sound annoyed and failing miserably. He couldn’t be irritated with her, no matter how hard he tried.

“If you live in this century, yes. Although I’m not surprised that Mr. Kane, teacher of Classic Literature and AP Government, doesn’t understand the significance of a Facebook ‘like.’ You have so much to learn about the 21st century, Marcus.”

It was on the tip of his tongue. _“Then teach me, Abby.”_ The perfect balance of conversational and flirtatious, it would steer the conversation in a direction of which Raven Reyes would approve. But looking at her, all sass and unfettered joy, he couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t risk ruining whatever existed in this moment by trying to guide the next.

“I know,” he said. “But I don’t have time for that stuff. I can barely keep up with everything as it is.”

“Tell me about it,” Abby said, twirling noodles around her fork. “This is the first relaxing night I’ve had since…” she trailed off, appearing to count backwards in her head to some unspecified date. “God, I don’t even remember.”

“Well, this is amazing, Abby,” Marcus said, shoving the last of his spaghetti into his mouth, savoring the flavorful zest of the sauce and the perfectly-cooked noodles.

“Thank you,” she said. “I can’t believe it turned out as well as it did.”

“You’re a talented cook,” he said, relishing the way her eyes lit at that word – _talented_. “I bet you can make more than just spaghetti.”

Their conversation paused as she took a sip of water, resumed as she set down her glass. “Sure. I make a great peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If Clarke were here, she could tell you about it. Apparently in grade school kids would trade her their Zebra Cakes for a half of her sandwich.”

“Oh, I don’t need proof,” Marcus grinned, setting his utensils atop his plate and leaning back in his chair. “I’m confident your peanut butter and jelly surpasses even Gordon Ramsay’s.”

He’d come dangerously close to admitting he watched reality TV, and waited for Abby to latch onto his reference and begin good-naturedly teasing him. But the name-drop sailed straight over her head, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

She was almost finished with her meal, although it was a wonder they’d gotten to eat anything at all. They hadn’t stopped talking for the entirety of the evening, covering subjects from their worst day on the job to their most entertaining essay and everything in-between.

He stole a glance at the clock. 9:15. Could they really have been talking for an _hour_? It had only felt like fifteen minutes, at most.

Abby seemed to notice the same thing at the same time, standing to collect his plate on top of hers.

“I really don’t feel like doing dishes at ten tonight,” she explained, her gaze trailing to the pots and pans that littered the island in the middle of the room. “And the dishwasher’s broken, so…” she trailed off apologetically, and he wondered if this was his cue to leave. But she’d need to drive him back to his car, so that wasn’t logical, was it?

“I’m not kicking you out, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said with a smile, and he hoped his relief wasn’t as palpable as it felt. “Some company would be nice. Clarke doesn’t stick around for dishes often.”

He stood from his chair, joining her by the sink as she turned off the fan. They stood side by side, arms almost touching, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her skin. If he looked out the window in front of them, he could see the stars, the yellowish glow of the moon that made every snowflake sparkle and shine.

“Whatever you’d like me to do, I’ll do it,” he said, turning to her, volunteering his help as she began running the water for dishes.

“What if I don’t know?” she said, turning her body so she was angled toward him instead of the window. Her voice grew quiet, her words riding on a single faint exhale. She wasn’t talking about the dishes anymore.

And suddenly the word around her faded, the lights grew dimmer, and she was the brightest thing in the room. She was always, he thought, the brightest thing in the room.

“Then I’ll wait,” he murmured. “I’ll wait until you figure it out. I’m not going anywhere, Abby.”

“Marcus,” she sighed, “I won’t ask you to –“

“You’re not asking me to do anything,” he interrupted, as visions of a thousand cringing Ravens danced before him. _Do something, do something, do something._ But what? She didn’t know what she wanted, and he wasn’t going to push her. “This is a choice, Abby. Not an answer, because there isn’t a question.”

He felt that familiar pull, that gravity, that force rendering him powerless to so much as look away from her. The splashing of the water in the sink as it filled, the gentle humming of the lights…it all went quiet. There was only Abby, her voice, her eyes, her words.

Because there wasn’t a question. If she needed time, he’d give her time. He’d wait. If it meant there was a chance for them, even the tiniest, most fractional of hopes, he’d cling to it. Because he’d never felt like this before, he’d never met a woman like her who could put him back together and tear him apart with just one look. It was transfixing and terrifying and beautiful all at once, and the only thing he knew for certain was that he couldn’t get enough of her.

“We shouldn’t,” she said, stepping closer, close enough for him to feel the warmth of her breath on his neck. And he knew it, too – this was wrong, this was so very, very wrong, this was the thing that could cause their downfall and get them fired. This was the thing they’d been dancing around since last week, perhaps longer than that, perhaps from the first day he’d laid eyes on Abigail Griffin and awoken it in his soul.

“We shouldn’t, or we can’t?” he whispered. “They aren’t synonyms, Abby.”

“Shouldn’t,” she repeated. “We shouldn’t.”

And then, without fanfare or warning, she leaned in and pressed her lips against his.

The kiss started slow, tentative, hesitant in every way their drunken kiss had been bold. She was asking a question now, he thought dimly as every neuron in his brain fired and died all at once. And for once, his body and head and heart all agreed on how he should respond.

So he wrapped her in his arms and pulled her close, the knot that had been tied in his chest since she left him on the couch finally coming undone. Accepting his answer she reached up and tangled one of her hands in his hair while the other came around to grip his shoulder. The pressure of her nails on his skin made him shiver, a sensation dulled only by the wet warmth of her tongue skirting the length of his lower lip.

He opened himself to her with a quiet groan, tasting the faintest hint of the pasta sauce that was both his and not at all his own, both a lie and a truth. But she was more than just that, she was sweet, she was a fiery spice, she was every shattered piece of glass that composed his life melted down and recreated into something new, something beautiful.

They broke for air for the smallest of moments, came back together with no intention of letting go. He dragged his teeth against her lower lip, pulling it into his mouth, remembering how she’d responded on that fateful night. Abby gave a soft moan of pleasure, and that sound alone was enough to make him come undone. That was the sound that had haunted his dreams, his thoughts, his every waking moment.

No matter how long he spent kissing her, it would never be long enough.

“Marcus,” she sighed, and he could barely believe the way she said his name, the grace with which it tumbled from her lips, the reverence, the adoration. What had he done to be worthy of this beautiful creature?

And in their all-consuming connection they’d forgotten one singular, important detail: the sink was still running.

Water spilled over the edge of the countertop, soaking them both in a mixture of hot water and dish soap, and they broke apart with a gasp.

“Shit,” Abby breathed as she slammed the faucet down, halting the flow. Marcus couldn’t help himself. He laughed. And suddenly she was laughing, too, clutching him like a lifeboat in the ocean, breathing him in like oxygen in space. He leaned down to rest his forehead against hers, past the point of caring how his clothes clung to him on his left side.

“Perhaps that’s our cue to start the dishes,” he whispered, teasing her. It was amazing, he thought, how much confidence he didn’t know he had until she pressed it into him with her mouth on his skin.

“Not yet,” she whispered, her lips ghosting against his, touching him just enough to drive him to the edge of oblivion and force him to wait there. And he would, he knew. He’d wait there forever if he had to, because Abigail Griffin was his forever. “Not yet.”

“Okay,” he said, leaning in to kiss her again. “Not yet.” 


	8. Of Weekends and Rejections

Between more kisses and touches and sighs, the dishes were entirely forgotten. They sat, covered in pasta sauce and noodles, scattered on the counter and the stovetop and the kitchen table.

Abby couldn’t have cared less.

From the moment Marcus wrapped his arms around her, the rest of the world faded to black and white. Dimly, she remembered there were things that should have been being done, various responsibilities she was abandoning, a danger into which she was diving deep, deep down.

And then he murmured her name, two syllables, worshipful like a prayer as she peppered kisses along his scruffy jawline.

“ _Abby_.”

Part of her wondered if they should go ahead and finish what they started a week ago, if she should guide him over to her worn suede couch, covered with various stains from meals eaten in front of the television and dirty shoes and _life_ , and let her body have what it so desperately craved. But a quick glance at the clock informed her it was now 9:30 – God, had she really been making out with him for 15 minutes? _Time flies when you’re having fun_ her brain provided, and she couldn’t stop herself from smiling.

They were as bad as kids themselves, she and Marcus, so deeply lost in each other that they couldn’t find their way back to the reality that moved closer with every tick of the clock, every movement of digits on the oven. She ached for him, a physical sensation she hadn’t felt in almost a year, and she thought he might have been hard through his jeans.

They really were as bad as the kids. If not worse.

But if Clarke decided to come home early and interrupted them yet again, Abby might not be able to hide her frustration and, more importantly, her daughter might need therapy. And she wasn’t going to let their first time be some frantic, blurred, frenzied thing in the backseat of her car: they weren’t _that_ close to being teenagers.

Abby made her way back to his lips, insatiable, goosebumps forming as his fingers slipped beneath her flimsy shirt. This was everything and nothing like a week ago, an image in a circus mirror, a reflection in a rippling pool. But, elated and dizzy and despairing all at once, she realized sex was out of the equation. At least for tonight. If they’d started this sooner instead of dancing around it for a week, then maybe…but no. Why, she wondered, had they been so _idiotic_?

 _Because you were dumb enough to go and get drunk on school premises_ , her brain reminded her. _And then get Marcus drunk, and then practically fuck on one of Miller’s couches._

Oh. Right.

It was hard to remember all that, she realized, when his mouth was on hers and his fingers were on her skin. It was hard to remember this – whatever it was – was built on a house of cards, and one wrong move could send it all tumbling down.

Marcus seemed to sense her mind had drifted elsewhere and leaned away, withdrawing his hands, as if he were concerned she’d changed her mind. As if perhaps she didn’t want him.

What a silly, stupid man.

“Hey,” she breathed, her hands still tangled in his hair. She opened her eyes slowly, gradually, coming back to reality in disjointed spades.

“Hey,” he responded with a chuckle, looking at her with his eyes the color of fresh coffee, the shade of the thing that kept her going on the darkest, coldest mornings when she was ready to shut off her alarm, roll over, and give up. Her heart fluttered at the sight of him, of his kiss-swollen mouth, of how utterly wrecked he was for her. Had he looked like this last Friday? Not for the first time, Abby wished she hadn’t been quite so drunk. Certain of those memories, she thought, she might like to retain.

But they were gone now, lost to an alcohol-infused abyss. So the only solution was to make new ones. And tonight would stick in her memory forever, sharp and clear as a focused microscope. Every detail was magnified, heightened, and she couldn’t help sensing he felt the same.

“What did you put in that pasta sauce?” he asked with a grin, and she smacked him playfully on the shoulder, bringing her arms to rest around his neck. She played with the hair at his nape as she spoke.

“You should know,” she smirked. “It’s yours, after all.”

He winced, his fingers stiffening at her hips. “Full disclosure…that’s not actually the sauce I use.”

Abby groaned, more amused than annoyed. “I knew it. I knew you wouldn’t use something from a jar.”

“I didn’t want you to feel badly about it,” he said guiltily. “There’s nothing wrong with using the store-bought stuff.”

Maybe, she thought, she should have been angry with him. After all, he’d told her he used a thing he truly didn’t use, and she’d all but based her dinner around it. But he was looking at her with that expression of his, the one that made him look like a golden retriever who couldn’t find the ball he used to play fetch, and she couldn’t even bring a flicker of anger to the surface. He’d only been trying to help.

“Well, I don’t feel bad,” she said. “Not all of us can name every bone in the body. So if that’s the trade off for my store-bought pasta sauce…”

He smirked, and she felt her skin catching fire. Had he always been this attractive when he was being arrogant? Was it different now, because she knew he was kidding? Whichever it was, it was hard to keep control and keep from kissing that expression off his smug face.

“I’m going to take you up on that, you know,” he said, no longer the golden retriever. “Can you, by chance, recite the opening lines of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities?”

Abby would’ve sooner gone back to work at the hospital than touch a Dickens novel. She’d heard Clarke complaining about them on many occasions, and for her part, Abby’s tastes in reading were a bit more…modern.

Taking her silence as an answer, he launched into a monologue worthy of their drunken escapades.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” he began, his voice rich and silky as hot chocolate on a freezing day. “It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.”

He paused, smiled his smug little smile, and Abby wondered when classic literature had become so damningly _sexy_. If the audiobooks sounded like this, maybe she’d have to start listening to Dickens…

“Should I continue?” he said tauntingly, teasingly and Abby was seconds from either kissing him or smacking him. Instead, she did neither.

She stuck her hand in the dishwater, as if testing it, instead gauging the distance between Marcus and the water. He wasn’t too far, and if she aimed her wave correctly…

_Splash!_

And seconds later, Marcus Kane was dripping with lukewarm, soapy water, more soaked than he had been from their earlier incident.

“Oops,” she said, biting her lower lip to keep from laughing. “That’s weird, I guess it must have overflowed ag-“

She paused, realizing his hands were no longer playing with the fabric at the hem of her shirt. _Oh, no._

“Don’t you dare,” she warned him, picking up a towel. “I can defend myself.”

Her fingers weren’t quick enough, and he snatched the other towel from the counter before she had the chance.

“You were saying?”

 _Shit._ “You sounded really great reading…whatever that was. You should keep going.”

“I would’ve, if I hadn’t been so rudely interrupted,” he said, his left hand slipping beneath the surface of the water.

“You can’t count on a doctor to care about Dickens, Marcus,” she said, slowly backing away, wondering how much distance he could realistically put on a wave. “I’m pretty sure our DNA is coded against it.”

He grinned. “We’ll see.”

He drew back his arm, she flinched, and…

The next thing she knew, she was covered from head to toe in soapy, bitter-tasting water that soaked through her shirt and down to the top of her jeans. How the hell, she wondered, were they going to drive back to the school like this?

It didn’t matter. She wasn’t admitting defeat.

Taking a quick glance at the door and down the driveway to discern that her daughter wasn’t arriving, Abby sprinted back over to the sink and dealt Marcus Kane with another miniature tsunami, gluing his silky dark hair to the top of his head. He spluttered and coughed, taken aback by the blast, and Abby froze.

“Marcus?” she said as he kept coughing. “Are you okay?”

He nodded.

“It just-“ he wheezed, shoulders shaking. “I didn’t swallow it right, I don’t think.”

She came closer, instantly willing and ready to put this behind them.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Marcus, I didn’t mean to-“

_SPLASH!_

And suddenly the rest of the goddamn sink was emptied and Abby Griffin was waterlogged from her head to her bare feet. Oh, that little…

“Kane!” she shrieked, and he laughed. “It’s not funny!”

If she hadn’t been so playfully enraged, it might have registered that this was the happiest she’d ever seen him. On the night they’d gotten drunk, he hadn’t been happy – he’d been content, perhaps, but it was flimsy like a well-worn bridge, seconds from falling apart. This was real happiness, true joy, and he never would have told her but it was the happiest he could remember being in months. Maybe years.

Even though she was playfully enraged, she registered that this was the happiest she’d been in weeks, months, not since Jake. This was happiness in its purest form, undistilled, untainted, and she could barely hold it as it swelled in her chest.

“You look ridiculous,” she said. She’d meant it as a way of maintaining some of her dignity, but as she stared at him she realized how true it was. Half of his gray sweater had turned black with wetness, his hair cemented to his scalp while his lower half was completely dry, holding a towel out in front of him in defense. He looked like something out of the cartoons Clarke used to watch on Saturday mornings.

A laugh found its way up her throat and from between her lips, and before she knew it he’d closed the distance between them to kiss her again. She smiled into the contact, pulling him flush against her as their soaking clothes heightened the friction. This kiss was decidedly less delicate – there was nothing to ask, no question to be answered – and when their teeth collided in the heat of passion, they both simply chuckled.

“We’ll have to work on that,” she muttered, making a mental note. _Kissing while covered in dishwater. Needs work._

“I always tell my kids that practice makes perfect,” Marcus said. Yet _another_ thing Abby hadn’t known could be sexy: that overused phrase.

“I’m sure you do,” she murmured, pulling him down until his mouth collided with hers. She was flush against the counter now, Marcus leaning over her, and somewhere it registered that maybe it should’ve been painful being in this position but it couldn’t be, it couldn’t possibly be, not when his lips were so soft and his beard was the texture of sandpaper and his hips pressed against hers and locked in like a key and his skin gave off heat like a furnace.

Then a noise sounded through the house, nothing either of them had caused, and Abby sprang away from him as if the heat of him had seared her skin.

Not quick enough, as it turned out.

“Oh my God,” Raven stammered, covering her eyes. “I support it, but I don’t need to see it.”

“Raven?” Abby gasped, her hands still resting on Marcus’ chest. “What are you doing back here?”

“I left my phone,” she said, walking quickly over to the table to retrieve the device neither she nor Marcus had noticed was there. Raven paused for a moment in front of the door, eyeing the situation and shaking her head.

“Nope. You’re on your own with this, guys. I’ll tell Clarke she’s clear to come inside.”

 _Well,_ Abby thought, staring at Marcus almost apologetically. _At least we’re scarring a different one this time._

 

* * *

 

Abby could always tell when Friday came around. Not because of the calendar above her desk or the date on her phone, but because her eighth-hour class became _insufferable_ from two o’clock until the bell rang a half-hour later.

She did her best to explain the carbon cycle, pointing to various locations on the diagram, disheartened to see that no one but Zoe Monroe was taking notes. Abby liked the girl; she was quiet, reserved, but when she spoke it was because she had something to say. While it didn’t much help her participation grade, Abby respected her for that.

The bell finally rang, and the entire classroom (Abby included) let out a sigh of relief. _Finally,_ Abby thought. At long last, she’d have some time to herself. Clarke and Lexa were going out tonight – Clarke hadn’t bothered with explaining when or where, and Abby only told her to be home by midnight – so the rest of the night was hers. Eight hours without responsibility, without constant necessities and tasks to accomplish.

She didn’t even know how to spend it.

Turning off the Smartboard and projector, her eyes drifted to the pile of grading she hadn’t gotten finished the night before. Her plans for the evening hadn’t exactly included making out with Marcus Kane instead of doing the dishes and then staying up until midnight to take him back to his car and sing along to the radio and kiss him a little more, his lips searing against the frigidity of the air around them and damn, why didn’t they live somewhere where they weren’t separated by bulky layers of winter coats?

It was undeniable that nothing had gotten done – she’d come home and washed the biggest of the dishes, put them away, then thrown herself into bed with a smile she hadn’t worn since Jake. And she would’ve been lying if she said she hadn’t dreamt of him, of his hands sliding farther up her body than her hips, of his mouth mapping out every inch of her skin, of that shiver-inducing voice murmuring her name as she toppled over the edge.

And she would’ve been lying if she said she hadn’t woken up this morning with a hunger for him fiercer than she’d felt the night before, and Abby hadn’t thought that was possible. She needed to put out this fire soon, before it consumed her completely. Already she wasn’t getting her work done: she was daydreaming about him, about how it would feel to have him inside her, of the sounds he’d make when he came for her, the moans and growls and sighs.

_Focus. You’re not eighteen anymore, Abby. Get your shit together._

But just next to that pile of paper was the thing she’d stepped on this morning – the thing she couldn’t figure out, the thing that didn’t make sense. It was beautiful, unexpected, perfect in a thousand ways she couldn’t name. So why did something about it feel…off?

With a sigh she picked it up – it was written on a flimsy sheet of folded notebook paper, scrawled in black pen, but the handwriting was unmistakably his.

 

_She walks in beauty, like the night_

_Of cloudless climes and starry skies;_

_And all that’s best of dark and bright_

_Meet in her aspect and her eyes:_

_Thus mellowed to that tender light_

_Which heaven to gaudy day denies._

 

It was signed with a simple ‘M’, yet another thing that felt off. After what happened last night, Marcus would sign his name to such a beautiful piece – he wouldn’t hide under a shroud of anonymity. And yet this was the scrawled cursive she’d seen on her daughter’s essays, on various pieces of paper in the teacher’s lounge…no one else could have written this but him.

“Another long day?” a voice asked, and she jumped in spite of herself. She’d been so focused on the paper that was and wasn’t his, she hadn’t heard Marcus enter her classroom. He stood in front of the door with his hands in his pockets and his leather messenger bag thrown over one shoulder. She removed her glasses with a sigh, the relaxation she felt in his presence palpable and utterly, completely welcome.

“Not as long as yesterday,” she said, standing to meet him as he pulled the door closed and allowed his bag to slide to the ground. “But not short, either.”

He laughed. “It’s Friday, Abby. Were you expecting it to feel _short_?”

 _It was longer because I was thinking about you for ninety percent of it,_ she nearly said but held the words inside her lips. They’d only kissed twice…well, three times if they counted the considerably shorter session inside her car and facing away from any cameras that faced the parking lot. But because they hadn’t yet established that intimacy, that connection, she couldn’t bring herself to say the things on the tip of her tongue.

“No,” she said, wrapping her fingers around the silken knot of his tie to guide him away from the door, away from the only windows that didn’t have drawn blinds. He moved with her, transfixed, that same expression he’d worn last night creeping back over his features. He was every bit as lost in her as she was in him, and she yearned for the day when she could say the words without overthinking, without feeling pangs of guilt over the ring that still lay nested above her heart. “Today felt longer than usual, Marcus.”

“Why’s that?” he asked, and Abby bit back a sigh. For a man as talented with his mouth as he was, he was equally as oblivious as he was gifted.

So instead of explaining the semantics, she closed the gap between them in a quick, but passionate, kiss. It was just long enough to feel him close, to feel the beating of his heart quicken beneath those pesky layers of clothes as she flicked her tongue against his, but just short enough that if someone knocked on the door they wouldn’t sound out of breath when they explained he’d only been here to wish her a happy weekend. Because, to the the universe at large, that was the only reason Marcus Kane would be in her room at 3:15 on a Friday.

Fortunately, no one barged in, and there was no need to explain.

“Oh,” Marcus said as she leaned away, sounding a bit self-conscious with that ambiguous accent she adored. She kept reminding herself to ask him where he was from, or where his family tree dictated he was from, but she took one look at him and even her most carefully-laid plans flew out the window. “Today felt longer for me too, then.”

They grinned at each other, the only sounds the rhythmic clicking of the clock’s second hand and the gentle whistling of breath through their lungs.

“I’d been meaning to ask you,” he said, brown eyes sparkling, “are you free on Saturday night? There’s a restaurant that just opened downtown I’ve meant to try, and…” he trailed off, adorably red-faced and awkward considering she’d kissed him only moments before.

Saturday night…other than her weekend routine of doing laundry and cleaning the house, there was nothing she needed to accomplish. She felt an electric thrill run through her, realizing the implication behind his words.

“Marcus Kane,” she smirked. “Are you asking me on a _date_?”

He smiled, dropping his chin to his chest for the tiniest of moments, giving in to the bashfulness that glowed around him like a haze. It was incredibly endearing, refreshing, and it took everything she had not to pull him into her arms and deliver her ‘yes’ with her mouth on his skin.

“If Saturday doesn’t work, we can try a different day,” he said. “If you want to go. Or if you’d rather not go to TonDC, we don’t have to. It’s just-“

“I’ll go,” she said, cutting him off with the same smile she’d worn to bed the night before. “Marcus, I’ll go out with you. To TonDC, or wherever you want to go. You fixed my car. It's only fair.”

He looked so triumphant, so joyous, she couldn’t stop herself from giving him one more chaste kiss on his cheek.

“I can pick you up at 7,” he said, and she nodded. That way, she’d have a whole day to get her work done, fold laundry, and figure out what the hell she was going to wear. When was the last time she’d worn a dress? Did she even own any?

“Sounds perfect,” Abby said, reaching up to stroke the side of his face. He leaned into her touch with a sigh, and gradually, she moved close enough to fold herself against him. So she knew she’d be seeing him tomorrow, but what was he doing _tonight_? Did he have any interest in coming over and sitting with her while she graded papers and drank wine and watched romantic comedies she finally felt like she might understand?

 _Don’t be clingy,_ she reminded herself with no shortage of chagrin. _You just saw him last night, and you’ll see him again tomorrow._

But God, tomorrow seemed like a lifetime away and she wanted him _now_.

A knock at the door started them both, and Abby sprang out of his arms faster than she’d fallen in the hallway yesterday morning. Who the hell, she wondered, was still here at this hour? Hadn’t everyone gone home?

She moved to the door, leaving an equally surprised Marcus in her wake, and she blanched when she saw who’d come to visit.

_Thelonious?_

It wasn’t that Abby didn’t like Thelonious Jaha – far from it. She didn’t hate him - they had a strange kind of friendship, bonded by Jake's friendship with him and Clarke's friendship with Wells. But after the events of last Friday, Principal Jaha might hold her and Marcus’ fate in his hands: he just didn’t know it. He walked around with the ablility to crush their livelihoods by watching a simple tape, and the man had no idea.

So seeing him, after being given a brief moment to fantasize about Saturday night, was a bit of a buzzkill to say the least.

“Hello, Abby,” he said as she opened the door, apologizing for locking it (smart of Marcus, she thought, to make sure no one would interrupt them).

“Marcus was just wishing me a good weekend,” she said as he stepped into the room, gave Marcus a nod of acknowledgement which he stiffly returned. Thelonious’ presence unnerved him just as much as it did her, and she could tell he wanted nothing more than to rewind time and not let him in, to remain quiet and wait for him to go away.

“I’m sure,” Thelonious said in his cool, crisp voice, tones that reminded her of the breeze howling against the brick building. “Although I’m actually here to talk to you, Abby.”

Her blood ran cold, although she made every attempt to disguise her discomfort. Stealing a quick glance at Marcus – who looked equally terrified for her – she tried to convey her elation about Saturday in one quick glimpse. Not even Thelonious could take that from her.

“Well, Abby, I hope you get your grading done,” Marcus said, moving toward the door, picking up his bag and throwing it over his shoulder in one fluid motion.

“Same to you,” Abby responded, the panic in his eyes making it hard to look at him. Was it possible that they’d only had one perfect day, one fraction of a moment, and now their house of cards was tumbling down? “See you Monday, Kane.”

He turned around, and seconds later he was gone.

Abby stood to face her visitor, forcing her palms to remain steady and her breathing even. _You don’t know why he’s here. It might not have to do with Marcus. Don’t get ahead of yourself._

“You wanted to see me?” she asked, formal.

“I did,” Thelonious responded. “I’d been meaning to talk to you for a while, but I just…couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

_Damn._

It figured, she thought, feeling the chain of Jake’s ring tightening around her neck. Just when she thought she’d found a way to be happy, when she thought she might’ve found someone who made her believe she could find true balance in her life again, the universe would send them toppling to the ground.

“I don’t understand,” Abby droned, doing her best to sound innocently confused instead of abjectly panicking. “What couldn’t you bring yourself to do, Thelonious?”

He laughed, a cold, hard sound. “You’ll laugh at me.”

Abby frowned. _Laugh at him?_ Clearly, this wasn’t about the security footage. This wasn’t about Friday night. This wasn’t about her and Marcus, this wasn’t going to put a dam in whatever was flowing between them. Abby Griffin wasn’t a religious woman, but she could’ve dropped to her knees and given a prayer of thanks to whatever deity would listen.

She still had her Saturday night.

“I won’t,” she said hesitantly, leaning against the countertop at the front of her classroom as he stood on the opposite side.

He sighed. “I was wondering…if you’d like to go to the new restaurant in Polis with me tomorrow. TonDC. It’s been reviewed very well.”

Of all the possible scenarios that had flashed before her when she first glimpsed Thelonious Jaha on the other side of her door, this had been perhaps the farthest into left field she could’ve ever imagined, the farthest out of the realm of ordinary into which her brain could explore. And even then, she wasn’t sure it would’ve ever crossed her mind.

“I…” she stammered, speechless. She had no interest in going on a date with Thelonious Jaha. Her heart had left the building with Marcus Kane just five minutes ago, fused to him as solidly as the ice that lined the streets. But would that refusal, she wondered, set off a chain of events they couldn’t erase, couldn’t prevent, couldn’t deny? That, she thought, was a chance they’d have to take. And besides, she wasn’t even certain he monitored video footage. That seemed like a thing for custodial staff or secretaries to do, not the principal.

Not for the first time, she was letting her paranoia get the better of her. That had been a week ago, and if anything were going to occur as a result it would’ve already happened. Why couldn’t she just let herself be happy with Marcus, instead of worrying about things they couldn’t control?

“Thelonious, you’re a great friend. And I’m flattered you asked,” she started, trying to remember how she’d done this in college when various men had asked her out and she was with Jake. Hopefully, she thought, Thelonious would react with a bit more maturity than they had. “But that’s all I want us to be.”

He nodded, shifting his weight from formal dress shoe to formal dress shoe. He rocked back and forth like a pendulum, and Abby felt as though she aged twenty years in waiting for him to open his mouth.

“I understand,” he said at long last, and Abby slowly let out the breath she’d trapped inside her lungs. _Thank God._ No tantrums, no demands, no bargaining. Men really did mature as they got older. Who knew?

Arkadia’s principal stared at her with a mixture of hurt and longing, and she hoped she hadn’t damaged whatever tremulous friendship existed between them. Or, more importantly, between Wells and Clarke. She couldn’t stand the thought of one of her daughter’s oldest friendships being impacted by her love life.

“I hope you have a good weekend,” he added in a rush as he strode toward the door, his hand on the knob, turning back to her as if the pleasantry had been a mere afterthought. As wholly numb as she felt at the prospect of going on a date with him, she felt guilty for making him feel so embarrassed. Why hadn’t she left right away after school and called Marcus later? This whole mess, she thought, could have been avoided.

“And you as well,” Abby responded.

Her stomach still churning with mortification, Abby gathered the rest of her things and waited until she knew he’d left for the day. A ten-minute increment should do it, she thought: he usually left right away after the day ended, and she figured he’d only stayed behind to talk to her.

Then her phone buzzed, she picked it up, and she forgot all about what had just happened.

**_ Marcus Kane: Just heard another U2 song. Guess this station plays a lot of them. _ **

Abby grinned, holding her thumb over the center button to unlock the device. It only took her seconds to reply: when she wanted to be, she was a lightning-quick texter.

**_Please tell me you’re not texting while driving, Marcus._ **

She added a smiley face at the end of her statement, making it apparent she wasn’t lecturing him. He made his own choices, but she did genuinely hope he was being safe. She’d be around for him to text when he made it home.

Seconds later, her phone buzzed again.

**_ No. I’m stuck in traffic.  _ **

She cringed. The interchange between Arkadia and Polis was prone to backups, even though construction season had long ended. It seemed no matter how many times they widened the highway or changed exits, the traffic would remain overwhelming.

Her fingers hadn’t even touched the tiny keypad when he texted her again.

**_ Everything okay with Jaha? _ **

She blushed in regret and shame, not wanting to call up the memory again. One time experiencing it had been more than enough.

**_It's fine. Nothing I couldn't handle._ **

Her phone was quiet for about a minute, then:

_**You never did tell me your favorite song.** _

Abby froze. What was her favorite song? She hadn’t been listening to music much since Jake – everything reminded her of him, from the songs they’d listened to together to the lyrics of ones she’d never heard – and his question caught her just as off-guard now as it had last night.

**_I’ll play it for you tomorrow._ **

Which meant she had to think of her favorite song at some point during the next twenty-seven hours. Great. Time to go re-acquaint herself with the world of music.

**_ Keeping me in suspense, I see.  _ **

She laughed, crossed her legs although she knew he couldn’t see her.

**_You know it._ **

In spite of herself, she added a winking emoji. They knew each other well enough for that, she concluded. And besides, he’d make of it what he would. They continued to converse for longer than she expected, and when he told her traffic was moving it was almost 4:30. _Damn. I should really be at home._

 ** _Can’t wait to see you tomorrow,_** he said.

She could hear the warmth in his words, and she barely paused to think before responding.

**_Me, either._ **

Her phone was quiet then, and she knew he must have made it through whatever was jamming the lines and lines of cars on the freeway. But tomorrow presented a unique problem, one she wasn’t used to having - what was she going to wear? She couldn’t go to a high-class restaurant in her old hospital scrubs, that much was certain.

And if anything ended up…happening, she didn’t want him to be seeing her in her plain, unraveling, washed-one-too-many-times underwear and bra. Jake had never cared, and she doubted Marcus would, either, but this was a matter of personal pride. If one thing led to another tomorrow night, she wanted to look irresistible.

So she trudged to her car, put in directions to the nearest shopping mall, and hoped for the best.

And as she drove down the freeway toward her destination, absentmindedly smiling as she listened to Marcus’ radio station, she silently swore that if she saw any of her students in Victoria’s Secret she’d retreat as if her life depended on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't take credit for the poem Abby received, and neither can the maybe-Marcus-maybe-not "M" - it's called "She Walks in Beauty" and it's by Lord Byron. :D Anyway, I hope you guys like the most recent update!


	9. Of Lingerie and Dress Shopping

Abby Griffin had one goal as she entered Victoria’s Secret, gripping her purse as though it were her lifeline to the rest of the non-lingerie related, normal world. _Get in, buy something passably sexy, get the hell out. Never come back._

Of course, the laws of the universe were never that kind to Abby Griffin. And five minutes into her descent into a youthful lingerie hell, sprinkled with too-beautiful models and teenage girls giving her gawky stares, she heard a voice she never expected to hear.

“Abby?”

 _Oh, no,_ she thought, pausing with her hands on a lacy thing that she’d drop dead if anyone saw her examining _._ That couldn’t possibly be…

“Raven?”

She turned around slowly, bra and panties in hand, facing her daughter’s friend with an expression of pained, feigned joy. And indeed it was Raven Reyes, holding a pair of underwear that was little more than a patch of lace and some strings and a black sports bra.

“Funny seeing you here,” Raven remarked with a smirk, eyeing the garments in Abby’s hands. She dropped them onto the polished white shelves, mind and heart racing as she tried to come up with an excuse. Could she be here getting something for Clarke? No, Raven would know her daughter would go shopping for herself: she wouldn’t rely on her, and especially not for something like this.

What about Christmas? No, that was last month. Clarke’s birthday? Four months from now. And the things she’d picked up…no, definitely not things she’d be buying for her _daughter_.

“These are just…” she stammered, her brain unable to keep up with her mouth as she swallowed hard. “I’m, um…”

“Buying lingerie in case you get it on with Kane?"

Raven aimed a wink in her direction and went back to sorting through drawers of different types of underwear, and Abby felt her cheeks go crimson. Was it just her, or had the temperature in this place suddenly gone up 10 degrees? And why was the music so _loud_? And why was it so _dark_? Was there a _reason_ the walls were painted black?

“You know, you’re allowed to be here, Abby. You don’t have to be embarrassed or anything. One time I saw a woman in here old enough to be someone’s grandma, and she was buying a corset. Like, damn. You get it, girl.”

Abby cringed, trying to dispel the image of grandmas in corsets from her mind’s eye. _Thank you, Raven._

“I wouldn’t usually go in here,” Abby said, feeling the need to justify herself while dodging Raven’s question like a wild punch. “But I, um, Marcus asked me to go out with him tomorrow, and-“

“And you wanna look hot,” Raven said, withdrawing her picture-perfect bronze arms from deep within the underwear drawer. She frowned, muttered something about coming here earlier, and turned back to Abby. “I don’t blame you. That’s why I’m here. Well, that and the sale.”

They were both quiet for a few moments, then Raven seemed to remember something she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten, at least judging by her expression.

“Wait, didn’t you guys do it already?”

Abby frowned, angled her body so a few giggling girls could pass through the aisle. “No. Where did you get that idea?”

“I thought you hooked up a week ago. On Miller’s dad’s couch.” Raven counted the number of items in her bag, glanced at the sign that read ‘7 for $27’, and sighed. Apparently she needed one more pair to get the sale price, or so Abby surmised.

“Nothing happened,” Abby said, defensive. “We kissed, but that was all.”

“Because Clarke and Lexa interrupted you.”

Abby felt an exasperated sigh working its way up her throat. “Right. That’s the _only_ reason we didn’t do it.”

Raven leaned against the table, eyed her up and down, giving her the trademark smirk Abby’d grown to know so well.

“Well,” Raven observed. “You seemed pretty damn close last night.”

Abby felt her blush deepen, sweat threatening to pool in uncomfortable places as a rush of heat swept through her like a firestorm. It wasn’t like she hadn’t spent all day thinking about it – one of his hands tangled in her hair, the other sliding higher and higher underneath her soaking wet shirt, the insistent pressure of his hips on hers and the shiver-inducing friction of his beard against her skin – but it was one thing to think about it, another to be reminded that someone had _walked in on them._ Again.

“We weren’t going to do anything last night, Raven,” Abby muttered, taking stock of the nearest exits and wondering how quickly she could move toward one without Raven Reyes stopping her. “Clarke was coming home.”

Raven laughed, tilting her head back under the booming speakers and the too-flowery scent of perfume. “Like she never walked in on you and Jake.”

“We were always careful,” Abby insisted. It had happened once – didn’t things like that happen once in every family, no matter how careful you were or how absolutely _certain_ you were that soccer practice went until 7? – but her daughter had been young enough back then to not understand, and Abby had been able to explain it away rather quickly.

“Forgive me for being skeptical,” Raven said with a grin, following Abby as she ditched her shopping bag and strode toward the exit. Marcus wouldn’t care if she didn’t have a pair of lace panties, right? He hadn’t cared last week. Granted, they’d both been drunk last week. But still…

“I mean, you and Marcus aren’t exactly waiting for her to go to bed or anything. Outside of school, you’ve been pretty public about it.”

Abby took a deep breath and let it out slowly, utilizing every tactic in her arsenal for dealing with difficult students. How was this, she wondered, getting her as riled up as dealing with Jasper Jordan and John Murphy?

“Is there a point to this, Raven? Or are you just following me to give me a lecture on unintentional public displays of affection?”

They paused outside the entrance, and seeming to realize she’d struck a nerve, Raven took her teasing down a few notches. Abby could see the earnestness in her dark eyes, knew she hadn’t meant to cause trouble. But Clarke was a subject that would always get a rise from her, even when she knew at her core that what she was doing with Marcus wasn’t wrong.

“I’m saying you should go for it,” Raven said, wearing a smile of genuine encouragement. “He’s _clearly_ into you, and you’re – I’m assuming based on what I saw yesterday – clearly into him. You’re definitely not the oldest person here. But even if you were, who the fuck cares?

“Once Kane sees you in something like that-“ she pointed to a mannequin wearing a black corset with mesh siding, leather section dividers and lace trailing up and over the bra – “He’s not gonna be wondering where you got it, how much it cost, or whether or not you were within the store’s target age group. He’s gonna be salivating over you.”

“He’s not going to see me in something like _that_ ,” Abby stuttered after a quick glance, hoping the reddish tinge in her cheeks wasn’t visible in the dim light. “This is our first date, Raven.”

“Nah,” she said, moving to her left so a woman with a giant tote bag could exit the store. “I’d say your first date was last week, your second date was the dinner, and this is your third date. And that-“ she inclined her head in the direction of the bustier, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively – “is a third date-worthy piece.”

“It’s out of my price range,” Abby offered flatly, shoving her hands in her pockets, hoping against all hope that Raven would drop the subject and let her shop or leave by herself.

“There’s no way in hell you know that for sure,” Raven retorted, pushing around a few twentysomethings to make her way toward the offending garment.

It took approximately two seconds for Abby to join Raven next to the mannequin, but it felt like an hour’s worth of walking. She was suddenly tired, dizzy, and just wanted to go home.

“Seventy-eight bucks. Could be worse, I guess. A bra and underwear would set you back the same amount. Although you’re still gonna have to buy underwear, I guess…”

 _Seventy eight dollars?_ That was at least fourteen morning coffees from her favorite café, two new shirts, a new jacket…and that was just for the corset, she thought as a wave of nausea washed over her. From what she’d seen of this place, the underwear would be at least another fifteen dollars, if not more. And she was still thinking of buying a new dress.

What sort of cruel, heartless world made a woman choose between looking good on a date and looking good in bed?

“Do you know what size you are?” Raven asked innocently, scanning the room for the corset Abby was _definitely not buying_.

“This isn’t happening,” Abby reminded her.

“You’re trying it on, at least.”

“No, I’m _not_.”

“Marcus would think it’s hot.”

“Marcus doesn’t know how much it costs!”

A few women gave them dirty looks as they shoved past – apparently, their terse conversation was ruining the sensual atmosphere. A saleswoman approached with a canned smile, and Abby seriously considered making a break for it before she came any closer. She could be halfway to her car before Raven realized she was gone, given how ungodly crowded this place was.

Then Raven turned to her and said the thing she never thought she would say, the thing Jake used to say to convince her to stay up late and watch those god-awful action movies with him and give him embarrassing, sloppy kisses in front of their daughter and spend stupid amounts of money on art pieces for their bedroom that she knew they didn’t need and he knew they didn’t need but damn, they looked good hanging on the wall above their bed.

She said the thing that made her fall in love with him a little more every time he said it, the thing that made her heart break and mend in three words, the thing that made her wonder if somewhere, across the expanses of time and space, Jake Griffin was laughing at the ludicrous situation in which his wife found herself tonight.

“Come on, Abby. _Live a little_.”

And frozen to the spot at hearing her husband’s words from her daughter’s friend, she hadn’t moved an inch when the saleswoman arrived.

“Can I help you ladies find anything?”

“Yeah,” Raven answered for her, taking the wheel in the conversation and steering it toward a destination Abby had no interest in exploring. “We’re looking for this thing in a size…” she trailed off, and Abby knew this was her cue to stop this madness before it went anywhere. She could thank this woman for her help, tell Raven goodnight, and leave before anyone else she knew discovered her here. If any of her students walked in, she’d never live it down. And God help her if one of her colleagues saw her…

She opened her mouth, took a breath without knowing what words would come out.

“34B,” she said, surprising herself with the confidence with which the words tumbled out. Where had this woman come from, and where had she been for the past half-hour?

Raven turned to her with a shit-eating grin, her eyes twinkling like the sequins on the various items of lingerie that hung on the walls like paintings in an art gallery. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to.

“I think we have one left,” the overly-enthusiastic saleswoman said in a noticeable valley accent, clicking her red nails together as she came to her conclusion. “That’s been a popular item. We just got it in last week, but we’re almost sold out already. Right this way!”

As Abby followed the woman, still lost in some sort of alternate-universe daze, Raven gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. Her tone fell somewhere between haughty and excited, but Abby was relieved to find it wasn’t mocking.

“Good choice.”

Abby rolled her eyes, but she softened the gesture with a tiny smile.

“I’m honored you approve.”

“What can I say? I have good taste. You’ll thank me later, Abby. After you’ve had the best sex of your life.”

 _If I’m spending ninety dollars, it had_ better _be the best sex of my life._

***

 

And so, a trip to the fitting room, and seventy-eight dollars later (the corset came with underwear, thank God), Abby Griffin was the owner of a getup that Raven assured her would “make Kane drop fucking dead.”

“I don’t think you understand,” she said as she idly sipped a slurpee she’d purchased as they wove their way through the crowd toward one of the anchor stores, the place where Abby was convinced she’d find something suitable to wear at a five-star restaurant. Their heels clicked on the polished tile as they walked, and Abby found herself wondering how she’d picked up such an enthusiastic shopping companion without meaning to, at all, ever. “He might not even be able to handle it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he passes out when he sees you. This might be too much for his nerdy, AP Government teacher brain to handle.”

Abby didn’t bother explaining that Marcus Kane didn’t kiss like a man who’d never seen lingerie before. Those were the details that Raven, in her own words ‘approved of, but didn’t need to see.’

“If he passes out when he sees me, why did I spend all that money?” Abby asked, wincing as the bag slammed against her calf. Who knew the mall would be this packed on a Friday night in January?

“Because when he wakes up, the sex will take your breath away,” Raven said with a wink. “Which reminds me. I’m gonna invite Clarke to sleep over at my place tomorrow night, and I suggest you say yes. Unless you’re planning on explaining to her why you’re doing the walk of shame on Sunday morning.”

Abby blanched. Of all the things she hadn’t considered, the timing of their date was perhaps the most glaring. Clarke wouldn’t mind that she was going on a date with Marcus – after last night, she probably expected it – but she would find it odd, and probably gross, if her mom didn’t return until the following morning in the exact same clothes in which she’d left the night before. How, _how_ had she overlooked that detail?

 _Because you’re not used to this,_ her brain reminded her. _Because you haven’t been on a date in over twenty years, at least not with someone you’re not married to._

And dates with Jake had been different. They were comfortable, comforting, like slipping into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt after a long day at work. And after enough years of parenting, almost anything counted as a date. Running errands together? Date. Doing yard work together? Date. Stopping for ice cream on the way home from parent-teacher conferences? Date. If they were together for more than five minutes at a time and Clarke or work wasn’t their sole topic of conversation, it counted. They made it count.

They’d been so absorbed with Clarke for so long that the most textbook romantic things they’d done had been on their anniversaries, when Jake took her to a fancy dinner and a movie and they stayed in a five-star hotel for the night. She’d still gotten butterflies when she saw him sitting across the table from her, looking dapper in his suit jacket and tie, staring at her like she outshone the sun.

No matter how many days they went without seeing each other until they lay together in bed at night, no matter how many silly arguments they fought before realizing how idiotic they’d both been and kissed and made up, she carried that look with her. It was as if she took a picture in that moment and stored it away, placed it in an album in the back of her mind, ready to pull out at a moment’s notice when she needed a happy memory to expel the sadness and exhaustion.

Until her happy memories of Jake became another thing that caused the sadness and exhaustion, until sometimes she slept on the couch in the living room because their bed was too big and too cold and too empty. Until the image of his smile opened something in her she couldn’t stitch shut, something that made her shove her face into one of the decorative pillows on the couch and cry until she couldn’t feel the burning in her lungs anymore. But she had to be strong, she couldn’t break down in front of Clarke or her students or anyone, really, so she bottled it up and put a piece of tape over the widening crack in her heart and told herself it was good as new.

But until Marcus Kane, she hadn’t really believed it.

Marcus took a needle and thread to that gash that losing Jake had opened inside her and began stitching it closed, offering a salve to a burn she hadn’t even realized she’d been suffering from. And suddenly those butterflies began stirring in her stomach again, and when she’d looked at herself in that store mirror with that corset on in that rose-colored lighting she realized something: she could call up that memory again. She could see Jake’s smile without that familiar, all-consuming pain.

To some extent, she was free. And she had Marcus Kane to thank for that.

“Thank you, Raven,” Abby said, relieved at the girl’s forethought. “I appreciate it.”

She smirked. “At least one of us is thinking ahead. You’re gonna have to get better at this stuff if you’re getting serious with Kane, you know.”

They walked into the store, the artificial lighting making Raven’s hair look almost black. Various attendants offered them samples of perfumes and skin care products, all of which Abby refused and Raven accepted.

“I’m not getting ahead of myself,” Abby said as another preppy salesperson intercepted her young companion. “We’ve only been together for a week. I think we should wait a while before saying anything’s ‘serious.’”

Raven turned back to her after getting another perfume sprayed in their general direction, mouth slightly agape. Abby breathed in a cloud of flowery-scented air and coughed, the bitterness making her gag.

“Well, you like him, right?” Raven asked, unaffected.

Abby didn’t hesitate.

“Right.”

“You haven’t felt like this about anyone in a while, right?”

“Right.”

“And you just bought a fucking corset because you’re gonna look hot as hell on your date with him, right?”

“Right,” Abby sighed as they made their way toward the eveningwear section, still fighting her mixed emotions about the item in her pink-striped, glossy shopping bag.

“Then why the hell would you hold back?”

The dresses beckoned, and Abby was tempted not to answer. Because she wasn’t holding back, not really. But if she were being honest, really, truly honest, she was waiting for something to go wrong. When she was with Marcus, things just clicked: her laughs were lighter and happier, the world seemed brighter, colors richer. And how long, she wondered, could that last?

“I just don’t think we should rush into anything, Raven,” she said after a pause, examining a lace-front dress with a sizeable portion of the back cut out. _No, thank you._ “We’re not kids anymore.”

Raven began weaving through the racks, picking up dress after dress after determining, correctly, that Abby wore a size 2. There were so few people in the section that she could hear the girl’s voice even from several racks away, as Raven filtered through the full-price section and Abby made a beeline for the clearance.

“I’d say that’s all the more reason to go for it, full throttle,” Raven said. “You guys aren’t getting any younger. You have feelings for each other, clearly – I would know, because I walked in on it.” She paused, shuddered. “That shit doesn’t happen every day. God knows my mom never looked at my dad that way.”

Abby stole a glance in Raven’s direction, found her holding at least ten different dresses and biting her lower lip as she concentrated on a tiny black number just inches out of her reach. It hit her, suddenly and clearly, why Raven Reyes was so insistent upon shopping with her, encouraging her to test her limits and reach for the stars. This was something she’d never had growing up: shopping time with a woman older than her, a woman who was, for all practical intents and purposes, her mom.

After all, once her parents had gotten divorced Raven spent enough time at the Griffin’s to be considered their second child – in fact, a few neighbors who didn’t know Abby and Jake well had actually asked if they’d adopted her. (The answer, of course, was ‘no.’) But Abby knew the girl didn’t exactly have a fairy-tale home life, and strove to include her in everything she could to make her feel welcome. To make her feel like she was part of something. After all, didn’t every kid deserve that?

And when she’d had her accident, Abby knew she visited Raven more often than her own parents had. Granted, she’d worked at the hospital back then, which made visiting more convenient than driving from the inner city. But she just as easily could have left after her long, tiring shifts, collapsed into Jake’s welcoming arms and listened to Clarke chatter on cheerfully about her school day: instead, she made her way to room 204 and spent an hour watching ABC Family with a recovering Raven and a clearly-not-playing-favorites-I’d-visit-anyone-in-my-class Mr. Sinclair.

Sometimes, she looked at Raven she still saw the sassy little girl with pigtails who didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Sometimes she saw the girl in the hospital bed, the girl who made it clear that she’d be walking again in no time. And sometimes, like right now, she only saw the beautiful, determined, brilliant young woman she’d become.

“Yo, Abby,” Raven said and she blinked, realized she’d been staring. “You good?”

Abby nodded hurriedly, not wanting to betray her somewhat mushy recollections – that wasn’t Raven’s style. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just – I’m happy you’re here, Raven,” she finished with a smile, and the girl smiled back.

“Everyone needs a personal shopper,” Raven retorted, but her expression made it clear she understood the weight behind Abby’s words. She gestured to the fitting room with her free hand, and Abby rushed forward to take some of the weight off her hands. “Now, get in there and try these on before my arms fall off.”

 

***

 

“Raven, this one’s a ‘no.’” Abby said as she examined herself in the mirror.

“Can I see it?” Raven asked, leaning against the sponge-painted off-white wallpaper as she scrolled through a social media website Abby had never heard of. Abby examined herself in the mirror, the way the dress just barely covered her ass, the barely-there fabric that exposed the swell of her breasts to the world at large by constricting her stomach so much that she could barely breathe. She wouldn’t feel comfortable walking out to show Raven this, let alone Marcus Kane.

“No,” Abby asserted, unzipping it and taking a deep breath, relishing the feeling of being able to breathe again. Who the hell could wear that for more than ten seconds at a time? They’d have to have surgery to fit into it. And forget about bending down, or reaching to grab anything…with a dress like that, she might as well return the corset. And it could be hers for only…four hundred dollars. Frustrated, she shoved it back on its hanger.

Had Raven checked the prices on these? Or did she just grab anything she thought looked decent? On a teacher’s salary, there was no way she’d be able to afford anything over a hundred dollars. Especially not after their trip to Victoria’s Secret.

This was the third ‘no’ in a row, after one ‘maybe’ and three ‘who the hell can afford that?s’, and they were both getting tired. Abby had a date with a glass of wine and a trashy romance novel, and as much as she enjoyed shopping with Raven she enjoyed having time alone, time to spend on herself. She hadn’t thought this would turn into a three-hour ordeal.

Some tiny, hopeful part of her kept whispering that she needed to get sleep tonight, too. Just in case. If the corset did its job, she might not be sleeping much tomorrow night…

Nearing the end of her metaphorical rope, she reached for another dress and took a deep breath.

“Abby, hold up,” she heard Raven exclaim, coming closer. “I think I found the _one_.”

She sighed. And the rest of these had been…what, exactly? Decoys? Distractions?

God, she needed her wine and a hot shower. And she needed them _now_.

“If it’s over a hundred, Raven, I can’t afford it.”

There was a pause, suspenseful, marred only by the canned elevator music filtering through crackling speakers.

“I mean…it’s a _little_ over a hundred. But it’s on sale. This was the only 2 they had left. Come on, don’t you at least want to see it? You don’t even have to try it on.”

The pleading in Raven’s normally self-assured voice wore her down, and she opened the fitting room door just enough for her to slip the dress inside.

“I really like it,” Raven added. “I’m pretty sure you will, too. It just has that ‘going-out-to-eat-at-a-fancy-Polis-place’ vibe, don’t you think?”

_Well._

She couldn’t exactly argue.

This one was at least a little more practical, and the price tag informed her it was one hundred and fifty dollars. Well, okay. Better than four hundred, she guessed. She unzipped it, let it fall from the hanger into her hands, admired the soft, silky feeling of the black satin material against her skin. She could spend an evening in this one, at least.

She unzipped the back of the gown, pulled it smoothly over her hips in a fluid tug. It restricted her movement considerably, but she thought it might – all the dresses here would. If they ran into any of their students, she certainly wouldn’t be able to run for cover.

Then again, Abby Griffin was sick of running. She was happy with Marcus, and she was pretty confident Marcus was happy with her if his texting habits were any indication. Why should they keep hiding how they felt about each other over something as dumb and meaningless as old security footage? What they had was real, and what they feared was not.

After somehow managing to keep the zipper from getting tangled in her hair, Abby stood back and took in her own image. She had to admit, this was the best one Raven had given her so far.

It hugged her figure like a well-worn glove and gave her curves she hadn’t even known she had, taking her body and reframing it as a searing silhouette against the fitting room’s grey-white backdrop. The neckline dipped lower than anything she would have been allowed to wear to work, coming to a peak just above the gap between her breasts, and the sleeves veered off her shoulders to expose the smooth expanse of her chest and collarbones. It was a reasonable length, too; not too short as to be scandalous, but not too long as to be wholly conservative. _Save the scandal for the corset,_ she thought.

Normally Abby avoided anything strapless – too much could go wrong in a very short period of time – but she felt confident she wouldn’t be tasked with repairing any wardrobe malfunctions. Paired with some black heels, that impractical sparkly necklace she’d bought a few months ago and never worn…this could work.

“How’s it going?” Raven asked, and in an answer Abby simply opened the door.

Raven’s jaw dropped.

“Damn,” she said, awestruck. “You look like…God, I don’t even know. You look amazing, Abby. I mean it.”

Suddenly hyperaware of her appearance in the three-section mirror that showed her from all angles, Abby blushed. How long had it been since she’d worn a dress like this? How long had it been since a dress like this even crossed her mind?

“You were right, Raven,” Abby beamed, seemingly unable to control the elated thrill that raced through her at the thought of Marcus seeing her in this tomorrow night.

“Can I get a picture of you?” Raven asked, and Abby felt her mood deflate a bit.

“Why?” she asked, still burned from the last time Raven had taken a picture of her without her consent.

“Well, I actually already took the picture. And I already sent it. I don’t know why I asked, really…”

Abby groaned. “Raven…”

“Hey, I found you that dress. You should be thanking me.”

She wasn’t wrong. And if the price she had to pay was one picture that went out to some mysterious group chat, then that was a small burden to bear.

“Thank you, Raven,” Abby said as she retreated into her fitting room, closing the door gently behind her.

“No problem. If it’s any consolation, Clarke thinks you look great. And we both think Marcus is going to love it.”

 _Oh. She only sent it to Clarke._ And if Clarke thought she looked great, and Clarke thought Marcus would love it, then that meant she _approved_. She knew what was happening between them, she understood that they had a date, and she was okay with it. That, to Abby, was more important than any item of clothing.

One last time before reaching up to undo the zipper, Abby took a look at herself in the mirror. She gave herself a confident smile, straightened her spine, embraced the butterflies fluttering in her stomach.

_You’re gonna make Marcus Kane ‘drop fucking dead.’_

Well, she hoped not. But a tiny part of her thought it might be nice to see him drool over her a little.

After all, what were dresses and corsets made for?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone's wondering what corset and dress I used for inspiration in this chapter, you can find them at the links below. ;) I had waaaaaaaaaaay too much fun writing this shameless fluff. Next chapter will be the date, I promise! <3 
> 
> Corset: https://www.victoriassecret.com/lingerie/corsets-and-bustiers/lace-mesh-corset-very-sexy?ProductID=302346&CatalogueType=OLS
> 
> Dress (the one I described is a little shorter, I took some liberties with length and price): http://shop.nordstrom.com/s/cinq-a-sept-jolie-off-the-shoulder-sheath-dress/4439490?cm_mmc=google-_-productads-_-Women%3ADresses%3ADress-_-5229220rkg_id%3Dh-708993bc5312883acf630966646547ab_t-1476636414&adpos=1o4&creative=57181589273&device=c&network=g&gclid=Cj0KEQjwyozABRDtgPTM0taCrKsBEiQATk6xDkP8-onvQtgas8EXITGWAtb4P38CB4ik0ECUHXSn7psaAgiG8P8HAQ


	10. Of First Dates and Favorite Songs

Abby Griffin was nervous.

She stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom that adjoined with her bedroom, leaning unsteadily over the sink as she did her absolute best to put on her makeup. Her hands were shaking a bit, an effect she’d played off as accidentally drinking three cups of coffee this morning instead of two, but her heart knew the truth better than her logical mind ever could.

She took a deep breath, willing the tremors in her hands to cease as she unscrewed the top of her mascara and raised the brush to her eyelashes. Today had been a laundry list of ‘firsts’, or rather, ‘firsts in over a year’: first time styling her hair, first time spending more than ten minutes on her makeup, first time wearing something other than hospital scrubs or practical work clothes. And, of course, first time wearing lingerie.

How was it possible to feel this confident and this terrified at the same time? Shouldn’t those emotions cancel each other out? As she studied herself in the mirror under the yellowish glow from the globe lights, soft rays dimmed by the darkness filtering in from the early sunset outside, the unfamiliar cocktail of feelings churning in her chest had her heart racing as if she’d just run five miles.

“Hey,” a familiar voice said, and Abby leaned against the counter, looking toward the door where her daughter was holding up a cell phone in one hand and her overnight bag in the other.

“Honey, what are you doing?” she asked, momentarily forgetting to be terrified.

“Raven asked me to send her a picture once you were ready,” Clarke answered without missing a beat. She dropped the duffel bag, placing a hand on either side of her phone. “I’m guessing you’re done now? You’ve been in there for almost forty-five minutes, mom.”

“There’s no way I-“ Abby started, her attention diverted by her phone buzzing. Though the screen lit up for only a minute, Abby was able to read exactly what the message said.

 **_ Leaving my place now. I’ll be there in about a half-hour, provided traffic’s okay.  _ ** **_ J Can’t wait to see you. _ **

Just the fact that he used a smiley face was enough to make her glow with joy. Marcus Kane, straight-laced AP Gov and Literature teacher, was sending her emojis. A month ago she wouldn’t have thought his actual face was capable of a smile, let alone his texting habits. All her trepidation lifted, blown away like a fog in the wind, replaced by an excitement that surged straight down to her core.

Her phone was alight for long enough for her to notice the time, too: she had been in the bathroom for exactly thirty-nine minutes. _Oops_.

“Okay, you were right,” Abby acknowledged, and Clarke grinned.

“You look great, mom. Seriously.”

Abby returned her daughter’s smile, beckoned her to come closer as she opened her arms. Her daughter stepped into them, holding her tightly as Abby raised a hand to stroke her hair.

“Thank you,” she said, pressing her close. As much as Marcus’ opinion meant to her, her daughter’s thoughts were just as valid. Shopping with Raven had been fun, but she wished Clarke could have joined them, too.

After a few moments of hugging Clarke stepped away, disentangling herself from Abby’s embrace.

“You guys are going at 7, right?” she asked, and Abby nodded. “Okay. Well, I’m all set to go to Raven’s.”

Abby frowned. “You don’t have to leave right now, Clarke. Marcus won’t be here for another half-hour.”

Her daughter blushed, brushing a few strands of blonde hair out of her eyes. It struck Abby that perhaps she was evading whatever awkwardness she thought might be coming – after all, she’d walked in on them once and had apparently sent Raven in the next time to scout for anything that might end with her in another embarrassing situation. All things considered, she couldn’t blame her if she’d rather not be around when Marcus arrived.

“Yeah, I know,” Clarke admitted, staring at her phone. “But my car is blocking the driveway, and Raven wants to see a movie that starts at 7:15, so if we don’t leave now…” she trailed off, letting Abby finish the sentence for her.

“All right,” she said, taking joy in the way her daughter’s face lit up when she granted her permission. Not because she was leaving, but because she was _happy_.

Abby had no problem with Clarke leaving – truly, there wasn’t much of a point to her loitering around the house for the next half-hour when it was clear she’d rather be with her friend. And for that too she couldn’t blame her: Raven was across the country for the majority of the year, and this time was special for them. But she couldn’t let her daughter go without asking the question that had been on her mind since she bought this dress, the corset, since she’d first wandered into the bathroom and started putting on her makeup and styling her hair.

“Just a minute,” Abby said as Clarke turned to leave. “I need to ask you something before you go.”

Clarke paused, dropping her duffel bag to the ground with a _thud_. “What?” 

“I have to know you’re okay with this,” Abby said. “Marcus and I.”

Clarke did something unexpected then: she laughed. And that weight that had settled in Abby’s heart since last week felt lighter, her smile was brighter, her relief sincere. It was one thing to assume based on a text sent to Raven, but another to know without a shadow of doubt. And now she knew.

“Mom,” she said, her smile bright. “As much as I don’t want to walk in on you guys again in my life, _ever_ , I’m happy you’re happy. And dad would be, too.”

* * *

 Marcus Kane was nervous.

The walk from his car to her front door felt both too long and not long enough, as if the cobblestone walkway to her had somehow lengthened since he’d last been here and, paradoxically, shortened at the same time. His polished brown leather shoes clicked against the cold stone as he walked, faster than he meant to, forcing himself to keep something resembling a decent pace.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her – in fact, he’d almost run a red light in his altered, Abby Griffin-affected state – what she’d think when she saw him dressed up like this, what she’d think of the restaurant, whether or not she’d have a good time.

Logically, he knew he had nothing about which to be worried. For God’s sake, they’d practically seen each other naked. They’d seen each other covered in dishwater. They’d seen each other at the end of long, unending days, when the bags under their eyes had grown larger and the wrinkles on their foreheads grew deeper. For two people who had never formally dated, they’d seen it all.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t know whether they could keep a conversation going, whether they had a similar sense of humor, whether they’d have anything in common. Those questions had already been answered. But damn, that didn’t stop the butterflies from fluttering in his stomach as he pressed the frigid plastic of her doorbell, heard the rhythm echo through her house. His mind was a broken record, playing that familiar old tune: _what if? What if? What if?_

Then she opened the door, and the record began to sing again.

If he thought she’d been beautiful in her jeans and t-shirt on Thursday night, the sight of her now stole every last wisp of breath from his lungs. She wore a black dress that hugged every curve on her body, formed to her like a glove, accentuated the aspects of her figure he’d caught himself gazing at even when he convinced himself they hated each other. Her chestnut hair was swept to one side, tumbling down her right shoulder like a waterfall, stopping just below a dazzling gemstone necklace.

She wasn’t wearing Jake’s ring, he noticed, his gaze resting on that area just below her collarbones. And for some unfathomable reason that detail made his heart stop in his chest, if only for a moment. Because the absence of that metal band meant more than her just forgetting to put it on – until this day, he hadn’t seen her without it. No, this meant something. This meant that what they were doing here wasn’t a distraction, it wasn’t a casual hookup with no strings attached. It was real, tangible, it had potential.

She felt something for him, perhaps the same as he felt for her.

He’d gone so numb looking at her that he didn’t feel the cold, didn’t feel the icy winter breeze as it blew his meticulously combed hair and floated the scent of his aftershave in her direction. He’d gone so numb that the whirring of cars on her street as they passed was naught but background noise, the accompaniment to her symphony, the frame to her art.

He was reminded of images he’d shown his kids of sirens from the Odyssey, of Helen of Troy, of Aphrodite, of Venus. Abigail Griffin put them all to shame. And the goddess smiled, a smile that could start a war, a smile that both held him together and vaporized him into the thin January air.

He was under her spell.

“Marcus,” she said in that smoky voice of hers, and he was thankful she’d said it because he’d quite forgotten what his name might be. “Sorry, I just need to grab my jacket. Come in.”

Still not trusting his vocal chords to produce anything but a mousy squeak he stepped inside as the door slammed shut behind him He heard the clicking of her heels on the tile floor as she stepped out of the entryway, opened a door, pulled her red jacket out of the closet. Heels. As if the dress and her hair and her breathtaking brown eyes weren’t enough, she had to go and wear _heels_.

How the hell was he going to keep his eyes on the road?

“I’m guessing traffic wasn’t too bad?” she said, rejoining him with her red jacket and a plaid scarf, carrying a black leather clutch in hand. “You made it here in less than a half-hour.”

 _Ah._ So he’d been speeding a bit. Well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t had just cause.

“No, it wasn’t,” he fumbled, his tongue a lead weight in his mouth. Every train of thought he’d sent out had been derailed by the image of her, and he was working diligently to get them back on schedule. “It was, um, the clearest I’ve ever seen it.”

The words tumbled out before he knew they were even in his mouth.

“You’re so beautiful, Abby.”

She paused fixing her scarf to stare at him, her expression making it apparent that she wasn’t certain whether or not he was referring to her just for tonight, or her _always_. And while yes, it was her undeniably gorgeous appearance that had inspired his remark, she was always beautiful. It didn’t matter what she was wearing, it didn’t matter how much makeup she had on, it didn’t matter how she wore her hair. He’d come to realize she was always, under any circumstance, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

After a moment she smiled, giving him the expression that he knew preceded one of her good-natured barbs.

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

They both laughed, the tension evaporated, and he offered her his arm.

“Come on,” he said, his stomach flipping as he felt her press against his side. “I doubt they’ll hold the table for us if we’re late.”

* * *

“I have it,” Abby declared as soon as they merged onto the freeway, and Marcus gave her a quick, confused glance.

“Have what?” he asked. She’d sounded so triumphant, so joyous, that he almost wondered if he’d challenged her to something and then forgotten about it. If that were the case, he’d have to figure out a suitable excuse.

“My favorite song. You asked me what it was, remember?”

 _Oh, right._ He had asked her what it was. His brain had been wiped clean from the moment he saw her tonight, but she’d brought at least that faint memory back from the void. He couldn’t deny his curiosity – was she the type who only listened to songs from the nineties, from when they’d been young? Was she the type whose taste evolved with the times?

“You can’t make fun of me, though,” she said, giving him what would only be described as a cautionary glare.

“Why would I make fun of you?” he asked, cautious, scrambling desperately to think of a scenario in which he’d poke fun at the angel in the passenger seat.

“Well, Clarke thinks it’s cheesy. She always yells at me when I play it.”

Marcus smirked. “Then your daughter might aspire to better music taste.”

His smirk turned to a full-blown smile as she laughed. Just another thing about her he’d never get sick of – her musical, vibrant laugh.

“She has her music, I have mine,” Abby said.

“Well, let’s hear it,” Marcus said, gesturing toward the radio. “The car has Bluetooth – you don’t need an auxiliary cable. If you go under your phone’s settings, you should be able to connect it.”

Abby shook her head and rolled her eyes, aiming a bemused smile in his direction.

“What did I say?” he asked, managing to get a quick glimpse of her before returning his eyes to the road, where they needed to _stay_.

“Just you, Marcus,” she said. “The man who doesn’t understand Facebook somehow has a grasp on the Bluetooth-cell phone connection. You’re a puzzle to me.”

“Hey, I have to be able to listen to my audiobooks,” he said, playfully defensive as she turned on her phone and began tapping away at the screen. “I just don’t get into that social media mess. It’s too complicated for me.”

“Sit in your car with your audiobooks and your Bluetooth, then. Whatever makes you happy,” she said with a teasing grin, hinting that their conversation about social media was far from over. Why did he have the sneaking suspicion that he’d be ending the night with a Facebook account?

Abby began drumming her fingers in a steady rhythm against the dark grey interior of his BMW as she waited for the connection to solidify. The more he thought about her words, the more they sunk in. And he thought it, realized it, but couldn’t get it out of his mouth.

_You make me happy._

The radio sprung to life all at once, and he never got the chance to say those four little words.

“ _Connected to – Abby’s iPhone.”_

She took a deep breath, her thumb hovering over the screen. He glanced away from the yellow lines and jumbled license plates to try and uncover the tune before she played it, but she found him out and shifted the device before he even had a prayer of deciphering it.

“Nice try,” she said. “Now, remember what I said.”

“I won’t make fun of you,” he said solemnly, expression blank, as if he were swearing before a jury. He almost thought he should offer to place his right hand over the iPhone and swear to refrain from teasing her about it, completely refrain from teasing her about it, with God as his witness.

“Okay,” she said, and without further adeu the music began – a minor-key soft guitar intro Marcus was certain he’d heard before. It hovered like a haze, a fog, just out of his reach while obscuring his clarity of thought.

“ _And I’d give up forever to touch you, ‘cause I know that you feel me somehow. You’re the closest to Heaven I’ll ever be, and I don’t want to go home right now._ ”

Oh. Oh, he knew this song. Who didn’t know this song?

Abby fidgeted adorably in the seat next to him, and as much as she’d deny it he knew she cared what he thought. He knew that some small part of her was waiting for his approval or denial, was waiting for him to either give her the metaphorical ‘thumbs-up’ or react exactly like her daughter. In earnest, he liked the song. It wasn’t his personal favorite – he had a soft spot for classic rock and, of all things, contemporary alternative – but he respected it for what it was. A well-written, perfectly orchestrated tune.

It took him the rest of the first verse to decide what to do, but once he made a decision he swore to himself he wouldn’t look back. He wouldn’t second-guess. It was, for lack of a better expression, now or never.

“And I don’t want the world to see me,” he crooned along with the lead singer, and she turned to him with the most radiant smile he’d ever seen, a smile that lit the dark streets and banished the omnipresent winter frigidity and repaired something inside him he hadn’t known was shattered. “’Cause I don’t think that they’d understand. When everything’s made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am.”

She picked up on the second verse, not missing a beat after the interlude.

“And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming, all the moments of truth in your lies. When everything feels like the movies, you bleed just to know you’re alive.”

Her voice was soft but steady, quiet but confident. She’d sang before – probably not in front of a crowd, she didn’t strike him as the “perform in front of an auditorium filled with people” type – but she could carry a tune, and she knew it. And he knew it, too, as her silky smooth voice made goosebumps crawl over his skin and his head begin to spin. Abby Griffin could _sing_.

The chorus came all too soon, and this time she joined him.

“And I don’t want the world to see me,” they sang loudly, turning up the volume, giving little thought to the drivers and passengers that gaped at them as they passed by two middle-aged adults belting out a nearly twenty-year-old song on a Saturday night. “Cause I don’t think that they’d understand. When everything’s made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am.”

He was completely lost in the sound of her voice, the enchanting haze that came with being so close to Abby Griffin that settled over him and made it okay to act like an idiot who maybe, just maybe, had found something that, if they followed the instructions and put it together correctly, could turn out to be love.

When the bridge hit, a chorus of guitar and strings, she reached over and slid her hand overtop of his. Her hands were warm and his were cold, and together they balanced at a normal temperature. He couldn’t have been certain, over the crooning of the orchestra and the trumpeting of the guitar, but he thought he heard her give a contented little sigh.

If he hadn’t been on the freeway, he would’ve stopped the car and kissed her. He would’ve melted into her to the accompaniment of soaring strings and memories and things they hadn’t yet said. He would’ve convinced her that this was, indeed, a worthy choice for a favorite song because it was halfway to being his favorite now, too, now that he could hear her voice and mix the lyrics with this perfect memory.

And she would’ve kissed him back, maybe laughed a little at his sudden boldness, probably asked him where this had come from. He would’ve pulled away just long enough to run his fingers through her hair, to tell her he didn’t know - it must have been the music, to see her roll her eyes before leaning in to kiss him again.

But he was driving on the freeway. So kissing her was out of the question.

So he settled for the idle stroking of her fingers against his knuckles, her feather-soft touch. She pulled his arm down so his hand rested against the center console, laced her fingers together with his as the chorus came back with a passion. And they sang as if it counted, as if they were being judged, as if this impromptu duet were powerful enough to dispel the ghosts from their pasts and the ones they feared might still be hovering in the dark corners of their future.

And it was, Marcus thought. For once they weren’t thinking about security tapes or meddling kids – they were just Marcus and Abby, singing to each other on a Saturday night as they drove toward a fancy restaurant in Polis.

His throat felt suddenly tense, tight, and he had to quiet his singing a bit as the song ended to accommodate for the lump that was rapidly maturing. For her part, Abby had let go of his hand to begin applauding softly. She was oblivious to the weight that had settled in his chest, the unanswerable labyrinth of a question that had drifted into his consciousness and demanded to be solved: _can you fall in love with someone in a week?_

Until now, he hadn’t thought so. He hadn’t been lucky in love in the past – women came and went and came and went with no rhyme or reason, no deep emotional attachments – and he’d all but sworn off the type of adoration by which all the songs and novels swore. He’d resigned himself to the fact that that was his fate: an empty life filled with meaningless encounters. A shallow life. A hollow life. A life that was a bare shelf, a meaningless, purposeless void when he wasn’t around the kids.

Abby Griffin had walked in, with her classroom filled with delinquents and loveable loudmouths, and changed all that. She’d began rewiring him from the moment he first laid eyes on her, changing the way he thought and the way he felt, and last Friday was only a symptom of a larger disease with which she’d infected him.

Could you fall in love with someone in a week? Was it possible? Could your heart adjust its rhythm so quickly in time to beat with someone else’s, could your soul mold itself to smooth another person’s jagged edges, and theirs, yours? Was that something that could be done in a week, or did it take longer? Was it a process?

For that matter, had he been falling for her since the second she walked into Arkadia? Had his soul begun that migration, his heart that adjustment, from the second he walked over and glimpsed her with beads of sweat on her brow and a loose braid trailing down her shoulders?

She’d been running late that day, just like most days afterward, but she’d been right on time for what mattered.

She’d been on time to save him.

“Bravo!” she applauded, giggling, her good humor contagious despite his brain’s efforts to weigh him down. “Encore! Encore!”

He took a kind of gawky bow, inclining his head toward the streetlights and their approaching exit.

“Later, maybe,” he said, and she groaned.

“Come on. I had no idea you could sing.”

“I can’t,” he argued firmly, truly believing it. She was the one with a good voice – he’d just been trying to hold a tune without thinking too hard about the beautiful woman who, somehow through a wrinkle in the laws of nature, ended up sitting next to him.

“You can,” she insisted. “I’m not kidding. You have a good voice.”

“So do you,” he retorted, desperate to turn the conversation back to her as he turned right to head toward the city’s historic downtown.

“Now you’re just being modest,” she sighed, leaning against the dashboard to stare at him directly, instead of out of the corner of her eye. The streetlights backlit her with a white ethereal glow, her coat a dark burgundy, every line on her face erased by the aura scintillating around her as the world whirred past. She looked youthful, dazzling, as if she’d been sent from Heaven itself to save his soul.

“I’m not,” he insisted, doing his best to remember the directions and remember to breathe and remember a thousand normal human things like how to maintain a conversation with the most beautiful woman on the planet. “Clarke probably doesn’t like listening to it because the original pales in comparison to your rendition.”

She bowed her head, beaming. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“Oh?” he said, his tone impish. “Well, I’ll have to ask her sometime. Make it an extra-credit question on her test, give her a point or two if she gets it right.”

Abby laughed, her eyes twinkling brighter than the stars. “Now _that_ would get us fired. As if we’re not already on thin ice.”

“It would get an answer, though. Of that, I’m sure.”

Abby didn’t answer right away, shaking her head in disbelief.

“And yet I’m the one who supplied the alcohol last week,” she mused.

Marcus pulled into the restaurant, got out of the car to allow for the valet to do his job. Parking downtown was a veritable nightmare, and most high-class restaurants offered the service. The man gave him a quick nod, making his way toward the passenger side door.

“It’s all right,” Marcus told him hurriedly, not wanting to be deprived of his chance to do yet another classic first-date thing, an opportunity to sweep her off her feet. “I’ve got it.”

The valet shrugged, a gesture that seemed to say, “suit yourself.” So Marcus handed the man his keys and opened the door, offering her his hand as she stepped out of the car.

Once she was standing on the concrete he raised it to his mouth, brushing her knuckles against his lips. Her cheeks flushed, and he had a feeling her reaction wasn’t just because of the cold.

“How chivalrous,” she said, her observation an enticing mixture of teasing and earnestness.

“I try,” he said, still holding her hand as they pushed open the building’s tall glass doors. “I try.”


	11. Of White Wine and Fairy Tales

The first thing Abby noticed was the trees.

They weren’t trees, not really, just tall tree trunks – they rose from the wooden floor of the restaurant and grew up to the high ceiling, as if they were holding the roof above her head. They sprouted from the floor in all shapes, colors and sizes, winding toward a ceiling paneled with a series of dark wooden beams that matched the paneling beneath their feet and several stone archways. Light came from a variety of red, blue and silver lanterns sprinkled throughout the establishment, flickering as they a yellowish glow on the murmuring crowd and appeared suspended in thin air.

Patrons were seated at a variety of different tables, most of which were separated from each other by a series of thin, billowy white curtains that dripped down from the ceiling and stopped just before touching the ground. It wasn’t completely private – the curtains were tied down the center with a curled brown ribbon – but offered just enough seclusion to make the atmosphere all the more intimate, quiet, and alluring.

Marcus hadn’t mentioned that TonDC looked like something out of the book of fairytales she used to read to Clarke, like the vibrant sketches of a magical forest sprung to life. With all these women in lacy, floor-length gowns and men in suits, Abby could almost pretend she was at a ball. And tonight, for the first time she could remember, she didn’t feel overworked, exhausted, weary, or worn-out. She felt like a princess.

Which, she thought as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, still holding his hand as they approached a polished wooden counter to check in, would make Marcus her prince.

He seemed to sense her looking at him, gave her a tiny smile that made her wonder what was going through his head. But she didn’t have time to ask before they were intercepted by the cheerful attendant behind the desk, and before she knew it they were checking their coats and being led to a table that looked like the cross-section of a giant tree.

Save for taking off their jackets, Marcus hadn’t let go of her hand. And as they walked through the restaurant side-by-side, stepping underneath stone archways and attracting appraising glances from all who noticed them, Abby thought he might just be her prince after all. Maybe.

The stroke of midnight would decide, she supposed.

They sat across from each other at their exquisitely carved wooden table, faces lit by a flickering candle nestled in the center. Marcus looked at her, his face glowing from a mixture of candlelight and anticipation, and for a moment she forgot how to breathe.

“Do you like it?” he asked, as if he’d somehow had a hand in this place’s construction, as if her opinion meant something more than whether or not she felt the architecture of this building was agreeable with her taste. He looked so nervous and anticipatory that she had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from smiling – he was wearing the exact same expression he’d had when he asked her out.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, the truth ringing in her words. “I never would’ve thought it looked like this from the outside.”

“I looked it up before we came,” Marcus said, and Abby failed at forcing back her smile. You could take the man out of his classroom, you could take him away from the circumstances that made him the overprepared stickler for the rules that he was, but you couldn’t take the classroom out of the man. “Now I know why it took over a year to open.”

“It took over a year?” Abby said, surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time it took that long for something to be constructed in Arkadia, save the summer season of unending road work. “That must have been some noisy construction.”

Marcus shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “My apartment’s on the other side of town – it’s about ten minutes from here. I wouldn’t have heard it.”

His apartment. Abby could barely hide her curiosity – how did Marcus Kane live in a place like Polis on a teacher’s salary? Was his space small, quaint, just large enough for him? Did he somehow manage to afford something bigger? The man was a mystery, and she was looking forward to solving him as the night went on.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked, and Abby froze.

She and Jake had always ordered whatever was cheapest – with Clarke growing up and college arriving faster than a bullet train, that was the only logical option. Their wine selections had consisted of whatever was under $15, if anything – they didn’t choose for taste, they chose for price and alcohol content. Red, white, or water: it was all much the same to her.

Of course, she’d never admit that to Marcus. Not when they were sitting in the middle of a fairy tale and she was wearing this dress and she could feel the soft cotton curtain billowing behind her, tickling her skin.

“Um,” she started, realizing almost instantly that that was the least convincing way to convey her fabricated knowledge of wines. But everything on the list was completely foreign to her – for the love of God, what was a NV CHARTONGNE-TAILLET BRUTE ROSÉ and why the hell was it $30? – and she felt as though she were doing her best to stay afloat in a sea of fancy alcohols. At the risk of sounding like Raven, she wondered: didn’t they all do the same thing?

After staring at the menu for ten seconds with nothing but utter confusion as an end result, she decided to defer to Marcus’ undoubtedly better judgment.

“You can pick,” she said. “I’ll be okay with whatever you decide.”

He gave her a soft smile, as if he understood the root of her struggle but wouldn’t call her out on it. “At least tell me red or white, Abby. You have to have a preference there.”

“White,” she said quickly, almost too quickly. But if she spilled white wine, it wouldn’t harm her dress. An accident with red might render it useless.

Marcus perused the menu for a few minutes longer, his expression one of intense concentration. She wondered why he’d let her pick in the first place – it was clear he had some amount of expertise in this area.

But she’d actually let herself believe he used store-bought Tomato Basil Garlic pasta sauce. _Riiiiight_.

“Are you okay with the Azul Y Garanza?” he asked, his pronunciation impeccable, and she felt herself flush with a sensation that had little to do with the restaurant’s balmy atmosphere. Did he speak Spanish? It wouldn’t have surprised her – he seemed the type to know multiple languages – but it did stun her, just a little. She remembered the corset underneath her dress, wondered when she’d be able to show it to him.

“Yes,” she said, still knocked a bit off-kilter from his foray into foreign languages. Their waiter arrived just in time, and they ordered Marcus’ selection. Apparently it was a good choice – at least, their waiter seemed to think so.

Once he’d left to retrieve their drink, Abby asked one of the many questions that had been on her mind. “Do you speak Spanish?”

Marcus nodded. “A little. I minored in it at Mount Weather – it basically came with my political science degree, so many of the courses were required. I’ve forgotten most of it over the years, though.”

“You went to Mount Weather?” Abby asked, astonished. “I almost ended up going there, but chose Trikru instead.”

“I had the opposite problem,” Marcus said. “I almost ended up going to Trikru, but chose Mount Weather at the last minute. Their Political Science and English programs were better.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to be studying either of those if I could help it,” Abby muttered, remembering the electives she’d been forced to complete. She wasn’t a religious woman, but attributed her passing grade in Classical Humanities to a higher power – there was no way her own motivation had been enough to get her through it. If she ever had to read another line of Aristotle, she’d vomit.

“Do I take it you weren’t fond of your English courses, Abby?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in a gentle mocking. If they weren’t in public, she knew exactly how she’d wipe that stupid smirk off his face.

Well, they’d have to get back in the car sometime.

“And how did you do in _Biology_ , Marcus?” she asked, mirroring his lofty tone, and the smirk vanished. “Did you have to take Chemistry? Physics?”

She noticed a flash of appraisal in his eyes and assumed he wasn’t used to women giving his casual teasing right back to him. And judging from the way he looked at her, it was a good-natured debate he genuinely enjoyed.

“I respect you for that,” he said earnestly, all teasing dropped and forgotten. “I wasn’t good at anything that required experiments. I had to do lab reports for one of my classes, and _that_ almost made me hate writing. My group and I could never get the right results. I would’ve had a 4.0 during my first semester if not for Biology.”

Abby laughed. The image of a young Marcus writing a report, sitting behind one of the old, giant computers that categorized the 90’s, likely red in the face with anger and muttering bitterly about his data being off and his grade point average dropping…it was almost too damn much.

“Well, I would’ve helped you,” she said, almost without thinking. “If I’d known you back then. Maybe you would’ve kept your beloved 4.0.”

“And I could’ve helped you with English,” he responded. “Assuming that’s what you struggled with.”

“I was okay in English, actually,” she admitted. It hadn’t been fun fulfilling the general education requirement for her degree, but the introductory English class she’d been required to take hadn’t been as horrible as she’d thought. “It was the Humanities classes that were…a problem.”

“I could’ve helped you with those, too,” Marcus said, and she noticed his tone getting softer as he studied her with that familiar gaze – the same one she’d seen when he looked at her on pasta night, the same one she’d seen through a haze when they were drunk. What she would give to know what was going on in his head.

Did he wish he’d gotten to know her sooner? That they’d gone to the same school? She’d been with Jake for most of college, anyway. They met in class during their sophomore year and bonded over a mutual hatred for their Calculus professor, he asked her to study with him for their midterms, and of course when the time came no studying was done. They stayed together through school, got married young, and then Clarke came along.

And that was that. Or was it?

She could hardly afford to think things would’ve been different if she’d known Marcus during her college years. Logically, she knew that the only man for her at that point in her life was Jacob Griffin – the man who showed up outside her dorm room with flowers during finals week, the man who brought her takeout pizza when she was too swamped with homework to even leave her room to get dinner, the man who put his own mathematics-intensive Engineering major aside when she needed to vent or cry or even just wanted to see him. He carried her world on his shoulders when she was too weak to lift it, and without him her school experience would’ve been nightmarish.

But what if things had been different?

Her mind stood firmly by Jake as her heart wandered free of her voluntary will, as the sensation of the absence of that familiar weight around her neck seeped into her skin.

Could she have met Marcus Kane in a lecture that they both despised? He was too shy to ask her to study with him, but might they have run into each other too many times to deny a connection? Could Marcus have stayed up late with her to help her understand that goddamn Humanities class, those wordy plays that might as well have been written in Mandarin for all she understood of them? Could he have showed up outside her dorm room with flowers, brought her takeout pizza, kissed away her bad grades and celebrated the good ones?

It didn’t matter, she told herself as the wine arrived and her heart came back to reality.

Jake had been there _then_.

Marcus was here _now_.

Anything else was just baseless speculation, an alternate universe that would never, could never exist. And she wouldn’t have traded her time with Jake for anything.

They’d been so wrapped up in their conversation that they’d forgotten to examine the menu, and embarrassed, they asked the waiter if he could come back in five minutes. He assured them that it was no inconvenience, and sauntered off to address his other tables.

“I have no clue what I’m going to order,” Marcus admitted, staring at the menu card with a mixture of contemplation and concern.

“Me, either,” Abby said, squinting at the tiny font and praying her eyes responded. She’d forgotten her glasses at home, and didn’t want to ask Marcus or the waiter to read her the entrees.

Eventually her eyes adjusted, and she began perusing her options. The menu was an intriguing blend of two types of options: classical American and what she liked to call “classical fine dining.” Caught between an Avocado Salad and an Eggplant Risotto, she decided to ask Marcus if he’d gotten any closer to making a decision.

“Don’t rush me,” he said with a genuine smile, his face all but obscured behind his menu, and she grinned, burying her face in her own before he could notice her expression and call her out on it.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare,” she smirked, and he beamed.

There were other contexts in which that phrase could be used…

_Get your mind out of the gutter, Abby. You have a whole dinner ahead of you._

But it was hard _not_ to think about it when he was wearing a jet black suit that made him look as though he belonged at some red carpet event, paired with a striped button down shirt and a gray tie that somehow made his brown eyes appear even richer…Abby would admit she’d always had a thing for sharply dressed men, and seeing him like this was almost enough to push her over the edge.

Every time she looked at him she caught herself wondering if his mouth would taste bittersweet like the wine they’d be drinking with their dinner, how the heat of his lips would feel against her neck, what the sensation of his beard scratching against her inner thighs would do to her. The heat of his tongue as he traced along her folds, teasing her, smiling as he finally found her center and nipping gently at her clit just before he pressed inside and _God_ , she really needed to order this food.

_Right now._

“I’m thinking the Chilean Sea Bass,” Marcus announced, completely oblivious to her brain’s forceful fantasy detour. He looked pleased with himself, completely satisfied with his choice, and Abby couldn’t help but fight all the harder to make up her mind at his obvious contentment. At long last, after bouncing her gaze back and forth between the two options, she decided.

“I’ll go with the Eggplant Risotto,” she said as Marcus set down his menu, signaling to the waiter that they were finally ready to order.

“That’s a good choice,” Marcus said. “I thought about that.”

The waiter returned and took their orders, and Marcus seemed to suddenly realize they hadn’t yet drank any of their wine. The glasses shimmered in the dim light as the drinks sat, tranquil and transparent before them.

“A toast,” he said as he raised his glass slightly. He was wearing that smile he only wore for her, his voice as rich as hot chocolate on a January night, and she felt a shiver run through her. “To drinking on legal grounds.”

“And to staying sober enough to remember it tomorrow,” Abby added, and he laughed. She felt hot and cold at the realization that that was a memory shared only between the two of them – well, Clarke and Lexa too, she supposed – but it was considerably private, naked, _theirs_. As uncharacteristic as it had been of them both, it was theirs and their only. There was something beautiful in that, she thought: a kind of poetry from the discordant context of the memory.

They touched their glasses with a soft clink and each took a tiny sip. The liquid had a kind of vanilla citrus flair that filled her mouth and throat with a gentle burning as she swallowed it, and she decided that this was the best wine she’d ever tasted.

“Good choice,” Marcus told her, apparently having come to the same conclusion as he reached across the table to hold her hand. She set down her glass, gave him a tiny frown.

“I wasn’t the one who picked it,” she reminded him, sliding her hand into his. She didn’t know if this was proper restaurant etiquette – holding hands on top of the table – but she didn’t care. His touch was soft and warm and sweeter than any wine, and equally as intoxicating.

“Yes, you did,” he insisted. “You decided on White, and I just picked an option. So – good job. You have a real knack for this, Abby.”

She addressed his absurd compliment with an exhale that was half a laugh and half a snort, and opened her mouth to respond when –

“Abby and Marcus, what a surprise.”

She recognized that voice.

‘Thelonious?” Abby said, her stomach dropping as she let go of Marcus. She gave a quick glance across the table to him, found he was already looking at her.

She hadn’t talked to him about what happened yesterday – what was the need, really? – because she was with him, she only wanted him, she would never consider Thelonious Jaha as anything more than a friend. But this encounter seemed a bit too measured to be left to fate, and Abby wondered if he’d be giving her no choice but to inform Marcus about what had transpired between them.

For his part, Thelonious Jaha looked nonplussed and casual as could be. A woman with dark hair and dark eyes stood next to him, wearing a red dress with strips of black that curved around her tall, willowy figure. She wore her hair styled in a high ponytail that trailed down her back, and she tilted her head slightly to the right as she observed them.

“Hello, Abby,” their unexpected visitor said, his voice as detached and rigid as ever. Every muscle in her body went rigid as she got the feeling he was working equations in his head, his eyes trailing down her dress and across the table to Marcus’ formal getup…it wouldn’t be difficult to calculate what was going on. “Marcus. What a surprise to see you here.”

“It’s quite a coincidence,” Marcus observed pointedly, and both Thelonious and his visitor turned their attention on him. Abby wondered if he’d noticed how uncomfortable she became and did something about it – a likely scenario, she figured. Just the thought made her heart swell, and she took refuge in the brief respite from Thelonious Jaha’s penetrating gaze.

“Isn’t it?” Thelonious observed coolly. Abby could literally feel her blood pressure rising with each word he spoke, scouring her brain for any possible arrangement of words that wasn’t outwardly hostile but made it apparent that he wasn’t welcome here. Why, oh why, did he have to show up on such a perfect night? It was as if midnight had arrived at the ball and her dress had returned to rags, her coach to a pumpkin, her horses to barnyard animals.

But her prince, she thought as she glanced across the table to see him feigning authentic interest in a conversation she knew he couldn’t care less about, was still her prince. And no spell cast by Thelonious Jaha could take him away from her.

She returned to the conversation just in time to hear the woman in the red dress introduce herself, her catlike eyes returning to Abby as she spoke. Her voice was oddly melodic, hypnotic, like the swinging of a pendulum or the echoes of a grandfather clock. Every word was measured, precise, almost as if she’d planned it long before she’d laid eyes on either of them.

“I’m Alie,” she said, extending a hand for both Abby and Marcus to shake in turn. “I’m one of Thelonious’s old business partners.”

“Abby Griffin,” Abby said as she took Alie’s hand. Her touch was cool but soft, and her movements had a kind of precise fluidity to them. “I teach Biology and Anatomy at Arkadia.”

“Abigail,” Alie noted, her voice rising an octave as recognition sunk in. “Thelonious has told me much about you. You used to work for the hospital, correct?”

“I did,” Abby said, wondering how the hell this woman already knew so much about her. There was more to the story of course – how she’d first met Thelonious while he was still a partner at the Cage and Wallace Firm when he’d brought Wells into the emergency room, how Jake and Thelonious slowly became friends after that first encounter, how Thelonious had offered her a job at the school after his passing because he knew how painful returning to the hospital where her husband had passed away would be.

But those were things this mysterious Alie didn’t need to know – or perhaps she already knew – and details hardly worth mentioning. Her main concern was getting him to go away, not out of rudeness (okay, a little out of rudeness – it was dreadfully awkward being around him given what had transpired the day before, and only time could restore normalcy and balance to that relationship).

“You were a great doctor,” Alie observed. “Thelonious said you saved his son’s life.”

Abby shifted awkwardly in her ornate wooden chair. She wanted nothing more than to excuse herself to go to the restroom and wait until the coast was clear, but she wouldn’t abandon Marcus to Thelonious and his oddly melodic counterpart.

“That was a long time ago,” Abby said tersely, beginning to wonder exactly when Thelonious Jaha’s feelings for her had begun stirring. Certainly not while she was still with Jake…right? “I’m happy Wells was okay, but I was just doing my job.”

“Undoubtedly,” Thelonious said. “And you were very good at it.”

An awkward silence enveloped the group as their visitors continued to stand over them, their added height giving them an undeniable aura of intimidation. After a ten-second silence, Thelonious said they should return to their seats and bid Abby and Marcus a good night.

“That was…” Marcus said, searching for the right word.

“Unexpected?” Abby offered. “Awkward?”

The words on the tip of her tongue were _uncalled for_ and _slightly terrifying,_ but she didn’t tell him either of those. Because then he would’ve asked why, and she would have either had to tell him what happened last night or lie. And she didn’t want to do either of those things.

So instead she placed her hand on the table again, signaling she wanted to re-ignite their connection. After all, now Thelonious knew they were together. He’d seen them on a date, holding hands. If that was the answer he’d been looking for by coming over here and staring them down, his melodically icy business partner in tow, then he’d gotten it. They had nothing more to hide.

Marcus gave her a soft smile, leaning forward to capture her tiny hand in his.

“Distracting,” he said, tracing his thumb across the smooth skin of her hand. “I was going to say distracting.”

The dread in her stomach at seeing Thelonious was starting to wither away, replaced by a radiant warmth for the man in front of her. She could hardly believe that it had been coincidence for him to find them here tonight – not when he’d just asked her out the day before – but she wasn’t going to let her suspicions ruin her evening with Marcus. She was still sitting in the middle of a fairy tale forest, wearing a dress that made her feel like a princess and dining like royalty.

And, most importantly, she still had her prince. A prince who had been just as bothered by Thelonious’ intrusion as she had, albeit for an entirely different reason: it meant he couldn’t focus on her, spend time with just her.

“I meant to ask you before,” she said, “did you put a poem on my desk before first period yesterday?”

Marcus shook his head, puzzled. “No,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, _someone_ put it there. It was written in your handwriting,” she noted, remembering how confused she’d been when she noticed it sitting amongst her other various papers. “And signed with the letter M.”

“I know it wasn’t me, then,” Marcus said with a wry smile. “I would’ve at least signed my name.”

“I thought so,” Abby said, relieved that she knew Marcus at least half as well as she thought she did. Not that she would’ve minded receiving that poem from him, but something felt off. Discordant. “But who would be imitating your handwriting to send me love poems?”

He was quiet, contemplative. “The kids?”

Abby snorted. “I don’t think the kids are invested in our love lives.”

“Abby, I’m serious,” he said, his voice dropping low. “Who else would be doing it, one of our colleagues? I’d think they’d talk to you and ask what’s going on between us. But the kids wouldn’t dare.”

He was right.

Callie or Sinclair or any of the other teachers would have the guts to approach her and ask about the nature of her relationship with him, if they had any interest in it at all. More likely, they had their own work and classes to worry about: her romance with Marcus Kane was a low-ranking topic on their list of concerns, if it ranked at all. But the kids – especially hers – were invested in them, having seen the rivalry escalate for months. And Abby could think of three or four suspects in particular who might have a good motive…

“Then I think I know who’s behind it,” Abby said, all the pieces of the puzzle clicking into place. And it could explain everything, all the little oddities she’d attributed to the beginning of a new semester or the freezing weather. It would explain the mysterious fire alarm incident, John Murphy’s comment, the way Octavia Blake often stared at her as if she expected something that wasn’t happening.

“Who?” Marcus asked, appearing genuinely intrigued. “I don’t think it’s any of my kids – they’re too busy with their studies.”

“You’d be surprised,” Abby said, remembering the Jasper-Nathan Miller incident. “Anyway, I think Octavia Blake and her friends might be doing it. Which would include your Nathan Miller, by the way.”

Marcus grinned, gave a few small chuckles. “I could see that,” he said. “That would explain why Jasper snuck into my class. They were watching us the other day when we were talking after you fell, too.”

“They were?” Abby exclaimed, shocked. “Marcus, why didn’t you say anything?”

“They weren’t causing any trouble,” he said hurriedly, in a rush to defend his lack of preventative measures. “And they were still technically in your classroom, so there wasn’t anything I could do.”

Abby groaned. “I wonder how many pictures of us were posted on Twitter.”

Marcus frowned as he leaned forward, ever the image of a confused, technology-deficient puppy. “Twitter?”

_I’m teaching this man about social media if it’s the last thing I ever do._

“There’s no way you haven’t heard of Twitter, Marcus,” she said, and he stared at her blankly as if she’d just asked him to name the elements on the periodic table or label the bones in the human arm. She sighed, couldn’t keep herself from giving him a bemused smile. “It’s the one with the bird logo over a blue background.”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, comprehension dawning across his perfectly-candelit features. “Oh, I’ve seen that one.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any point to asking you if you’ve used it.”

“No, there isn’t.”

She laughed, all trepidation over Thelonious’ unplanned visit evaporated. She could always count on Marcus Kane’s incompetence with technology to restore her good humor.

“What are we going to do about it, though?” she asked. “Now that we’re together, it doesn’t seem right that we keep leading them on. Not to mention all the chaos they could cause around the school…”

Marcus’ face went bright red as he gave her the biggest, most scintillating grin she’d seen from him while sober, his grip on her hand tightening just a fraction. He looked away briefly, perhaps embarrassed by his complexion, and she couldn’t help but wonder – was it something she said?

Was it the kids? That was nothing they couldn’t handle, as long as they were together. At the very least they respected her, and a number of them were at least slightly scared of him. Or the effect he could have on their grades, on their college admission chances.

The brief interlude gave her a chance to review what she’d said, to consider it from all possible angles and determine what had affected him so deeply. She’d asked him what they’d do about the kids, said now that they were together…

_Oh._

What an idiot.

What an adorable, technologically challenged, musically gifted, handsome _idiot_.

Had he really thought that just because she hadn’t verbalized it, that she didn’t consider them an item? For God’s sake, she didn’t go around shoving Sinclair into the far corner of her classroom and kissing him until she could barely breathe. Or was there just something special about hearing the words out loud, about the certainty they carried, the promise of a future waiting within them?

She had to admit, even she felt a rush when she thought back on it, about how confident she’d been when she said it. There had been no forethought, no consideration of how best to phrase it. She just said it. _Now that we’re together._ After almost twenty years of marriage she was used to being blunt, used to not mincing words, and it appeared to have worked for their benefit.

Not for the first time since they’d entered the restaurant, she wished she could lean across the table and kiss him, kiss him with all the force and urgency and adoration behind those four little words. There was so much to unpack in those three syllables – together – but the word was an answer to its own question. No matter what they faced, they could brave it. Together.

She gazed at him from across the table that felt much too long, felt the magnetic pull that had bound them together that first night. He regarded her with such open devotion, such unmasked fondness, and she knew such emotion must have been reflected in her own gaze. And in that way she was as naked before him as if she’d taken off her dress and her corset, as if she’d removed every stitch of clothing on her body and allowed his worshipful gaze to sweep over her, because she’d revealed something far more intimate than her skin: she’d revealed her emotions.

Abby could have stared at him forever, sat there across from him with his hand in hers until the sun came up, until the snow melted. There was something in his brown eyes that she’d been missing since Jake, a familiarity in which she could build a home. There was a security there, a quiet promise, and she didn’t know if she was ready to answer but part of her wondered if there was even a question.

Could you fall in love with someone in a week? She’d known early on how she felt about Jake, a certainty set in stone that was as unwavering and long-standing as the mountains bordering the city skyline. Her love for him had sprouted early and blossomed during their college years, grown into a beautiful flower, a blossom that would always exist in her heart. And for Clarke, too, there bloomed a flower. And Raven. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t room for another flower, another addition to the garden, no matter how tiny it might have been in its infancy.

She knew, no matter how much her brain tried to reason, that a flower had already begun blossoming for Marcus Kane.

He said something, but she was so lost in him that it didn’t register as anything more than a mumble.

“Hmmm?” she asked.

“The food’s here,” he stammered, as reluctant to break off the moment as she was.

“Oh,” she said, slowly sliding back to reality as her hand broke away from his. Their waiter, appearing slightly embarrassed at having intruded on such an intimate moment, apologized as he set down the plates. But as the rich scent of her meal drifted to her and she caught Marcus’ gaze once more across the table, she knew there was no need for him to apologize.

This wasn’t an ending, a conclusion.

This was a ‘to be continued.’


	12. Of Stiletto Heels and Suede Couches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating is jumping waaaaaaaaaaay up this chapter. Just letting you guys know now. ;)

There was something alluring about the city at night, something paralyzingly beautiful. Abby barely heard the dim crooning of the radio as Marcus hit every green light and sped through the city. People swathed in bulky jackets laughed and walked down sidewalks lit by orange-yellow glowing lanterns, and everywhere she looked she glimpsed smiles, cheeriness. It was different, she thought, being in the city now versus when she’d worked here.

She preferred it now. She preferred it without the omnipresent stress that had plagued her before, the sleepless nights on call, the constant buzzing of her pager. She couldn’t help but feel a little guilty when she worked night shifts, especially when she and Jake were first married, when he stayed home with Clarke and she went to work. Eventually she’d been able to rotate her hours, spend more time with her family, but those first few years had been atrocious.

But looking at the city now, the sting of those memories had faded to a dull ache. She had never ventured to this part of town before. This was the shopping district, a part of the city set alight by glamorous storefronts and populated by women with fur coats and shopping bags, couples with more money than they could hope to spend in three lifetimes. Clarke had never been much into fashion – her Christmas lists were littered with art supplies, not clothes – and she’d always made those purchases online for the sake of saving money.

Her gaze fell on a quaint-looking art supply store as they drove past, and she made a mental note to investigate it further. If she was going to be visiting Marcus down here often, maybe she could splurge occasionally and get something for her daughter. After all, she only had a little over a year left until she’d leave for college. The least she could do was help her explore her passions while she was still at home, while Abby could still be her mother. Within reason, of course. A $100 easel would always be out of the question.

“It’s beautiful at night,” Abby noted softly, tearing her gaze from their surroundings to focus on her companion. “I don’t remember the last time I was here so late.”

Marcus nodded, as if this specific thought had occurred to him many times before. “You should see it during Christmas,” he said. “They put up a huge tree in the heart of downtown, make an ice skating rink around it. It’s the best kind of chaos.”

Abby snorted, remembering the last time she’d gone ice-skating. Jake and Clarke had convinced her it was a great idea, that she’d love it, that even though she hadn’t been any good at it in college she somehow would’ve been able to balance on the skates now that she was older. Their logic was horribly flawed, she knew, but not wanting to ruin their fun she joined them at Arkadia’s tiny hockey rink when it opened for public use.

And, to shorten an embarrassingly long story, she landed on her ass upwards of five times in the span of a half-hour. There were pictures to prove it – pictures that would never see the light of day, as far as she was concerned. Those family albums were staying in the cedar chest where they belonged.

“I’m sure,” Abby said, hoping to steer the conversation away from anything that required maintaining a sense of balance while moving on ice. “Do they still put up lights on the streetlights, too?”

“Yes,” Marcus said, sneaking a quick glance at her as he drove. “They’ve started making them look like candy canes from Thanksgiving through New Year’s.”

Abby could only imagine the spectacle: kids running from light to light, pretending to lick them, being admonished by concerned parents. Clarke wouldn’t have taken the bait – she was too smart for that, even as a toddler – it was Jake she’d have to worry about, Jake who would do something incredibly stupid like licking a candy cane light pole to make his daughter laugh.

“It’s not so different than when I worked down here,” Abby mused, staring out the window. “When I worked at the hospital.”

“I’d been meaning to ask you about that,” Marcus said. “Why did you leave and come to Arkadia? Certainly not the paycheck.”

“The hospital?” Abby said questioningly, somewhat blaming Thelonious and Alie for this turn of conversation. This had to be triggered by their discussion of Wells, she was certain of it. “I don’t know that there’s much to tell, Marcus. I worked there once I finished medical school, and quit after…” _Jake. I quit after Jake._

And suddenly the streetlights weren’t so bright, the smiles on the faces of passersby weren’t so luminous. Because the last time she’d been here she’d been in that hospital, she’d had to say goodbye to the only man she’d thought she’d ever love, and she drove back home with the buildings in sepia tones and her heart beating a black solitary rhythm in her chest.

That was a memory that would always, always sting. Even though it had been a year, the smell of hospital antiseptic and her daughter’s tears hadn’t yet vacated her nostrils.

Marcus appeared to realize he’d struck a nerve and backtracked. “Abby, I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t have to talk about it if you’d rather not.”

She shook her head. “There’s nothing to apologize for,” she said. “That’s a normal thing to ask on a first date, Marcus.”

She took a deep breath, prepared herself to answer his question with a heart that had just begun showing symptoms of that all-too-familiar ache. No. She wasn’t going to let that pain overshadow everything they’d shared tonight, all the depth with which she’d enjoyed herself, the magic she’d felt in the air when he so much as looked at her.

Her head and her heart couldn’t ruin this night. Not now.

“I worked at the hospital after medical school,” she said, encouraged by how even her voice was as it left her lips. So far, so good. “I was there for about fourteen years. And then Jake passed away, and I couldn’t keep working in the place where he…”

She trailed off, swallowed hard.

“It’s okay,” Marcus said soothingly, his softness smoothing the goosebumps that had begun forming on her skin and making her heart ache with a completely different kind of pain. “We don’t have to talk about it. It’s okay.”

“Thelonious offered me the job at Arkadia,” she continued, needing Marcus to know it wasn’t his fault. He’d asked a question that most men would ask on a first date – why she worked where she did – and he was going to get an answer, dammit. Abby Griffin wasn’t so damaged that she couldn’t talk about her personal life. She’d make sure of that. “By that point Wells and Clarke were close, and he knew what I was going through. You guys lost a teacher to retirement, and he knew I had experience in the field he needed, so he brought me on. That’s how I ended up teaching at a high school instead of working in an emergency room.”

Abby let out a long, deep breath, working to keep her sigh quiet so Marcus wouldn’t know how the story had affected her. But, she reminded herself, at least she’d made it through. There were certain memories she despised dredging up, and that was one of them. But she’d survived the recollection. She’d made herself stronger because of it. The next time she spoke about it or even thought about it, it wouldn’t carry the same ache.

And she had Marcus Kane to thank for that.

He guided the car into a tall parking structure that bordered an even taller, polished building, waving a plastic key card in front of the console to get the gate to raise. The artificial, flickering light cast a new glow on him, on the angles of his face, and she saw a scar on the bridge of his nose that she hadn’t noticed before that moment. Not for the first time, she wondered what had led him down the path of teaching at Arkadia High School. Clearly, if he could afford to live in this part of Polis he wasn’t hurting for money.

They fell into a comfortable silence as he guided the car into a parking spot next to a concrete beam, positioning it perfectly on the first try. Abby wondered what he was thinking about, why the sudden lack of communication. Not that she couldn’t handle the quiet – with Marcus, quiet was just as meaningful as speaking.

“I’m sorry, Abby,” he said finally, his words barely a whisper. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I didn’t know.”

She reached for his hand, caught it as he turned the key to stop the engine and put the car in park.

“You didn’t know,” she said, matching his tone, her heart aching as she glimpsed the regret in his eyes. How could he punish himself so for asking a simple question? “And I need to talk about it, Marcus. Talking about it…it isn’t something I should avoid. Not anymore. You didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, I should be thanking you.”

A glimmer of hope, then, in those brown-black eyes illuminated only by the flickering fluorescents overhead. He angled himself toward her, focused his attention on her and her alone.

“For whatever it’s worth,” he started, “I’m happy Thelonious gave you the job. I wish it had been under better circumstances, of course. But if he hadn’t, I might never have met you. And Abby…” he paused, hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure whether the words in his head would fit into the gap in their conversation. She leaned closer, silently willing him to say whatever was on his mind. _Be brave, Marcus. Just say it._

“I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”

Her lips quirked into a trembling smile, the earnestness in his gaze and the honesty in his statement disarming her completely. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had been so refreshingly, completely, soul-baringly honest with her. Most of her conversations only struck the surface of things, whether in her work or her personal life, but this was uncharted territory. This was ‘feelings territory’, and normally she eschewed any expedition into that untamed jungle of her heart. But Marcus had somehow managed to forge a path without her knowing it, and his exploration didn’t feel foreign or like a violation. It felt natural, it felt real, it felt right.

So she said the only thing she could say, the only thing her jumbled mess of a brain and overgrown wilderness of a heart had to offer.

“What on Earth would I have done if I hadn’t had you slamming doors in my face for the past five months?”

She grinned to let him know she was kidding, leaned closer so they breathed the same air, so she could feel the warmth radiating from his skin as the temperature in his car cooled. Her hand reached up of its own accord to stroke his cheek, sifting through the gentle scratchiness of his salt-and-pepper beard with a featherlike caress. He leaned into her with an almost inaudible sigh, a tiny whisper of warm air against her wrist, and she knew that if she didn’t say those words she might lose them in a jumbled translation between her heart and her head and the rest of her body.

“I can’t imagine not having met you, either.”

Before she really understood what was happening her lips were on his, soft, gentle, and she slowly slid her hand from his cheek to run her fingertips through his luscious hair. This was nothing compared to what they’d shared on the couch or even by the sink – it was more tentative, muted, nuanced – a connection placed firmly within the context in which it had occurred.

Or at least, that was the way it began.

Abby realized as she leaned closer that she was still wearing her seatbelt – _idiot_ – and reached down to unfasten it, breaking the contact between them for a fraction of a second.

“Safety first,” he observed with a smile, a quip she hadn’t been expecting. She giggled as she did away with that pesky restraint, heard the sweet sound of a click echoing through the car, a click that represented freedom and hope and _Marcus_.

When their mouths met again they were less hesitant. The angle was awkward – she’d always hated kissing in cars for that reason, it didn’t feel natural to have half her body turned toward him while her legs were still facing forward – but she wasn’t ready to let go of this. Not yet. There were ways to remedy that problem, and she’d be damned if she didn’t take advantage of them.

Carefully, as to not scratch him, Abby maneuvered herself to sit in his lap. The heel of her stiletto caught on the center console as his hands slid to her waist, radiating warmth even through her jacket, and she cringed: there was no way that wasn’t going to leave a mark.

“Sorry,” she murmured once she was positioned in his lap, gazing into his eyes with her back against the steering wheel, straddling him. She’d admit she wasn’t very sorry, not when she could feel him hardening beneath her and when she could see him licking his lips with pupils blown wide. But it seemed like the right thing to say.

He pulled her close, the pressure of his hands on her hips making her dizzy. Some dimly-lit portion of her brain registered that her dress had slipped up her thighs to settle around her waist, that she was probably stretching it out by doing this. One hundred and fifty dollars down the drain, not to mention whatever was going to happen to her corset. And yet she refused Clarke her easel under the guise that it was too expensive, that they could spend their money on other things. There was some hypocrisy here, she thought with a smirk. Not that her daughter would ever know.

She leaned down as he angled his head upward and their mouths collided in a graceless, tactless explosion. He made a sound that fell somewhere between a groan and a sigh as she traced her tongue along his lower lip, relishing the scratchiness of his beard and the searing smoothness of his touch as he allowed her entrance, as her hands found the collar of his shirt and tangled in his hair and shoved him back against the soft leather.

Her taste buds tingled as she registered the fiery sensation that came with the wine they’d drunk earlier, the sweet, sensual bitterness that sent a shiver down her spine. He tasted like cinnamon and citrus, like the scent of fallen leaves in October, like apple cider on the first cold morning in winter. He was like swallowing fire, the roaring heat coursing all the way down to her stomach and pooling lower, pooling between her thighs. Could he feel this, how drenched she’d become? Did he know?

After an indefinable amount of time spent on each other’s lips, Abby moved her kisses lower to pepper along his jawline. The sensation of his beard against her mouth wasn’t unpleasant – it didn’t scratch, she’d thought it might – and lost to him completely, she didn’t notice his hands were moving until –

“ _Marcus_!”

She gasped as the fingers of his right hand slipped under jacket, the contact of skin on skin – God, _at long last_ – enough to send her world flying off its axis. He froze beneath her for a moment, his hand on her thigh, waiting for an order. “Don’t stop,” she sighed, feeling that fire between her legs building to an inferno as he took his sweet time and slid past that burning part of her to cup her ass.

He let out a low moan as she nipped at his earlobe, murmured a few things in his ear that she desperately hoped any stray security cameras weren’t powerful enough to pick up. Did they even have the capability to pick up sound? Or were they just for video footage?

She didn’t care.

“ _Oh, Abby_ ,” he moaned, her name hidden somewhere within a pleasure-addled sigh. She could feel his cock iron-hard beneath his pants and smirked, realizing she could easily give him payback now for all the months of assholery she’d had to endure.

Then his mouth found the hollow of her neck – a tiny expanse of skin and nerves that exploded with sheer sensation - and she cried out at the heavenly scraping of his sandpaper beard against her soft skin. Every cell in her body ached for him, to feel him hard and hot inside her, to finish that thing they’d started a week ago. She realized she might come just from this, just from the sizzling pressure of his lips at her neck and his fingers working closer and closer toward her aching center.

His hand left her ass to slide along her inner thigh, leaving a trail of heat in its wake, and she whimpered when she realized he was withdrawing it, leaving her without the sensation of him there, where she needed him most. She rocked her hips back and forth in an attempt to change his mind, no longer caring if their first time was in a car in a parking garage in the middle of a city because goddamn, if they did it right they wouldn’t even remember where they were. They’d remember how it felt. And the solid feeling of him was something no single finger in the bathtub or beneath her sheets in her too-empty bed could replicate, his sighs and groans weren’t something she could give herself.

He hissed as her motions intensified, as she collided with the rock-hard length of him. Frantic, she couldn’t keep the worlds from spilling past her lips, from boiling over in the heat of the moment as he sucked at her neck, trailed his tongue the length of her collarbone and murmured sweet nothings against her skin.

“Marcus, please,” she begged him, desperate, an aching need radiating through her entire body as she soaked through the flimsy lace of her panties and stained the red wool of her jacket. “Baby, please.”

“Not –“ he panted, breaking off with a surprised moan as her fingers slipped between their undulating bodies. “Not here.”

“I don’t care,” she argued, finding the button on his pants and unfastening it in one fluid motion. “I need you. And I don’t care.”

She pressed a deep kiss to his lips as she found him, smiled as she stroked his length, felt a shockwave of pleasure course through her at his pleasured gasp. He craved this just as badly as she did.

Abby continued her gyrations as she held him, keeping him close to the edge of oblivion, letting herself sink into the sensation of his mouth on her chest as he fumbled with the buttons on her jacket. Getting their clothes off would be a problem in this position, but for God’s sake, they were teachers. If they couldn’t figure this out, then what the hell were they –

_HONK!_

Abby stiffened.

Marcus froze.

The windows had fogged completely, at least in the front of the vehicle, so she couldn’t tell what the hell was happening. It was only after a few seconds of intense consideration that she realized what must have gone wrong - her back had hit the horn, causing the noise that echoed through the structure like a tornado siren.

“Dammit,” Abby growled, slowly removing her hand from his pants. It looked like he would be getting his way – there was no way of restoring the intimacy in this setting, not after that fumble. _Shit._

Marcus did something she hadn’t expected him to do: he dropped his head to her chest and started laughing. Apparently, he’d put two and two together and understood just as well as she did what had happened.

And she’d probably get an earful of it tomorrow morning, she thought with a grin that dawned over her features like a sunrise. So she’d better start preparing her retorts now.

Soon enough she was laughing, too, the absurdity of their situation making itself clearer and clearer to her as time passed. Here they were, two middle-aged adults practically having clothed sex in the middle of an apartment building parking lot. She’d thought it before and it would cross her mind again: they were just as bad as the kids they instructed.

“I’ll have to work on that,” she said as she leaned away, every inch of her skin humming with anticipation. There were benefits, she reminded herself, to holding out and doing it in his apartment. For one thing, they probably wouldn’t be horrifically sore afterward. And they wouldn’t have to invent an entirely new position just to get the angles right.

Marcus smirked, that familiar expression that poured gasoline on that fire between her thighs. If he kept looking at her like that, they weren’t even going to make it to his apartment.

“Practice makes perfect,” he grinned, and she rolled her eyes.

“Shut up.”

 

* * *

 

Abby managed to keep herself off of him during the entirety of the walk from his car and into the building, where a few tenants gaped at them with open mouths and wide eyes. She could only imagine how they must look to a crowd like this – their hair mussed, her makeup likely smeared, both of their mouths bright-red with the ghost of twenty minutes’ worth of kissing – a crowd that, at least she assumed, didn’t deign to have sex in their cars, and certainly not on a first date.

Oops.

She was so absorbed with Marcus, with the expanse of his broad shoulders underneath his coat, with the way he kept glancing back at her and practically sprinted to the nearest elevator, that she hardly took in her surroundings.

She knew there was a water fountain in the lobby because she almost walked into it, she knew the floors were a crimson shade of polished granite and there was a crystal chandelier that hung overhead and cast little flecks of rainbow light all across the room. And she knew the desk attendant was a tiny elderly woman in a black vest that scowled at her as Abby walked past with her hand in Marcus’s: they weren’t being subtle. At all.

The ding of the elevator arriving sounded like an angel’s song, like the heavens opening, the beginning of a blissful oblivion of which the simple thought was enough to make her go hot and cold all over. Once they were in his apartment, nothing could interrupt them. No one would walk in on them, no horns would blare. It would just be her and Marcus. _Finally_.

He motioned for her to step in first, and he followed soon after. Desperate to not have any other intruders in their elevator, barging in on their privacy, Abby pressed the ‘door close’ button, and Marcus grinned. It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d been seconds away from doing the same thing. His pointer finger found the button for the penthouse apartment – floor 15 – and the elevator beeped and whirred silently to life.

Then he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. He kissed her like she was air and he was underwater, he kissed her like she was springtime in the middle of December. And Abby kissed him back, kissed him with every ounce of fire roaring inside her body, kissed him like they’d been together for months instead of a week.

All too soon the elevator beeped, informing them they’d arrived at his floor, and they broke apart with a gasp. They stepped into the hallway with all the urgency of two people in love, two souls intertwined, and Marcus led her down the hallway with his hand on the small of her back.

His apartment was the last on the far end of the red-carpeted hallway, and Abby couldn’t keep herself from noticing how few doors there were in the corridor. These were some gigantic apartments, spacious spaces whose rents were nothing but a pipe dream to her. How did he afford this?

The pressure on her back evaporated as he rummaged in his coat pocket for the key, found it, unlocked the door. They both practically ran into the dark apartment as Marcus fumbled for a light switch while simultaneously picking up where they’d left off in the car. She discarded her jacket in a heap on the floor in unison with him, telling herself she’d come back and pick it up later. Unlikely.

They didn’t even make it to the bedroom.

Marcus pulled her close so she was flush against him, wrapped his arms around her tightly as if he were afraid she’d be taken from him at any moment. Abby relished the feeling of closeness, of nothing but a few layers of clothing between them that could easily be removed. He had been right, she thought: this was already better than trying to put together whatever jigsaw puzzle they would’ve attempted in the car.

His mouth was hot and heavy on hers as he guided her through an entryway and into a large open area, what she assumed to be his living room. It was sparsely decorated, she noticed between kisses – a chair here, a large television there, and a suede couch on the far wall.

But what really stood out to her was the floor-to-ceiling window that revealed the room to the outside world. Through it she could see the flickering lights of Polis’ tallest skyscraper, the fire that they always kept burning at the top for a tradition about which she’d long forgotten. The moonlight provided just enough light by which to see him, her Marcus, the man who stopped pressing his lips against her skin to take in the view with her.

“It’s beautiful,” she noted, lightly dusting her lips against his neck as she spoke.

He looked down to meet her gaze, already completely wrecked for her, his eyes sparkling with lust and anticipation and – dare she think it? – love.

“The view’s better in here,” he whispered. She could tell from the look in his eyes, the tenderness in his tone, that he meant every word. To him, the iconic Polis skyline paled in comparison to her. The twinkling lights and the glowing stars did not outshine her. To him, she was beautiful.

Abby smiled the lightest, happiest smile in her recent memory, pulling him down to her by taking a fistful of his shirt and tugging on it. Was it the most dignified maneuver she could’ve implemented? No, of course not. But did it get the job done? Yes.

They played the film reel of passion they’d paused to look at the city as his mouth found hers again and his warm, steady hands moved up her back, caught on the zipper of her dress. He gave her a questioning look – if she’d decided this wasn’t what she wanted he’d drop it, she knew – and she nodded, needing him to know she craved him. This wasn’t something she’d wake up and try to forget – this was something she’d wake up and _remember_.

He smiled widely enough to crack her heart, as if he truly couldn’t believe she was standing there in his arms and telling him she wanted him. The other detail she’d noticed about this room was that there were no picture frames, no pictures of parents or siblings; there were various paintings adorning the walls, but nothing to relate back to his family. Something told her Marcus Kane didn’t entertain many visitors.

She reached up and wrapped her arms around him as he unzipped her dress, as she let it fall to the floor and stepped out of it and her heels at the same time. She clutched him, pressing the depth of her feelings to his skin as she went to work on the buttons of his shirt, anchoring him to her as if to say _‘I’m here now. You have me.’_

In reality it was a frenzy of falling fabric, but in the moment it felt slow. In the moment it felt like layers revealing, like a series of shells being chipped away to get to the pearl in the center. He’d taken off his pants and underwear, and she slipped him out of his shirt before they paused for long enough for him to look down. For him to see what she was wearing.

There was a tiny little gasp as his eyes widened, as he absorbed the thin layer of lace and mesh that adorned her toned, thin body. He was already rock-hard, that much she could confirm. But if his reaction to seeing her was anything to go by, he could get a little more desperate.

So she decided to have some fun with him while she had the upper hand.

He touched her hesitantly, tentatively, his trembling hands leaving streaks of heat on her skin through the holes in the mesh. “Abby, you look…” he breathed, and she flushed upon hearing how his voice had begun to shake. If all it took to undo Marcus Kane was a little lace, she should’ve been wearing this months ago and gotten her way when it came to exam planning. “Amazing.”

Smirking at how thinly-veiled his desire was for her, she backed away from his touch and toward the brown suede couch. He let out a sound that came dangerously close to being a whimper, stepped forward again just as she stepped away.

“Abby,” he pleaded softly, all vestiges of his self-control evaporated. “Come here.”

She bit her lower lip, her smirk threatening to morph into a full-out grin. Who knew messing with Marcus Kane while wearing a corset would be this much fun? She’d be tempted to wear little lacy things to school now and give him previews during their lunch hour, just to see him squirm all afternoon. This lingerie weakness…this was something she could use.

“No,” she teased, backing up until the backside of her knees collided with the couch. She didn’t know where this self-confidence was coming from, this sudden rush of self-assuredness, but she wasn’t going to fight it. Instead she lay down on the couch, felt herself sinking into the soft surface, propped herself up on a pillow as she lay on her side. “You come _here_.”

So he did.

In a flash Marcus crossed the room and climbed on top of her, the solid weight of him between her legs making her moan. She’d noticed before just how big he was, the evidence of how badly he wanted her evidenced in his erection, but she hadn’t _felt_ him until his taut length pressed against her inner thigh. The pesky lace of her underwear was only getting in the way, keeping him from her as she soaked it through, and now that she’d teased him by having it on she just wanted it _off_.

He smiled against her skin as he began kissing her again, his mouth moving lower than ever before. He started at her neck, sucking lightly at her pulse point to make her cry out – he’d already learned that drove her crazy, God, how did he already know? – then moved to her collarbone, her chest, the swell of each creamy breast that the corset was holding prisoner.

She needed him to take it off, and she needed him to do it _now_.

Her body squirmed beneath him. The dual sensation of his beard scratching her skin and his fingers slipping under the flimsy strip of fabric that composed her thong was enough to make her see stars, and she let out a pleasured moan that she knew hadn’t escaped her lips in well over a year.

“Do you want something, Abby?” he murmured, his tongue sliding under the fabric of the corset as his fingers worked closer and closer to her center, fumbling with the folds of her cunt as she bucked against his touch.

“You know what I want,” she breathed, her statement ending with a sharp inhale as he stroked her, briefly, on that little bundle of nerves. Her hips slammed upward with an almost violent shudder, but he moved his hand away before she could get any more of him. “ _Marcus_ ,” she moaned, knowing he knew just how wet she was.

“I need to hear you say it,” he said, shifting so he could look in her eyes, so he could see just how undone she’d become for him against the silky surface of his living room couch.

And before she could get another word out he’d moved his fingers back to her clit, taking it between two of his warm, clumsy fingers, making her cry out as he squeezed her. Oh, he knew what he was doing.

“Marcus,” she panted, and finally his hand wasn’t moving, he was staying right where she needed him and his touch sent little electric shockwaves of numbingly paralyzing pleasure all over her body. “Baby, I need you. I need you to…”

Now wasn’t the time to be modest – for God’s sake, she was practically naked underneath him and he was rubbing her clit in a way that made stars dance before her eyes. But for some reason, it took longer than she thought it would to get those two little words out. _Maybe we’re not teenagers after all._

“Tell me, Abby,” he whispered, his voice like warm honey. “Tell me what you need me to do.”

He slid a finger inside her, perhaps experimentally, and she was gone.

“Fuck me,” she moaned as she felt herself tightening around him, around that stand-in for what would soon be his length. “Right now.”

He grinned in a way that drove her absolutely crazy with need, fiery with wanting in a way she hadn’t even known was possible. The lacy little thong was the first to go, landing in a shredded pile on the floor (she wouldn’t have underwear to go home in, some tiny part of her brain reminded her before giving in to him) and he reached around her back to unzip the final barrier between them and toss it unceremoniously across the room.

Then, without fanfare or warning, she reached down and guided him inside of her.

Her vision clouded for just an instant as she fought to see through the haze of pleasure, her body responding to the sensation of, at long last, having him inside of her. She’d thought about how big he was before, but it was something else to feel him – to feel the friction as he began to move, because he was already rock solid and she was heartbeats away from coming at the pressure of his mouth on her breasts and his tongue swirling over one nipple, trailing down the valley between her breasts then taking the other.

He pulled out of her almost completely before sliding back in again, hot and hard and reaching a place inside her that forced a cry of indulgent pleasure from her lips. And she knew he was feeling it too as he made his way back up to her neck, his mouth on the hollow of her throat, the sandpaper friction of his beard combined with the friction of his cock inside her enough to make her scream.

“Oh, Abby,” he gasped as her hips bucked, as they fell into a steady rhythm. She clutched his shoulders like she’d held his hand in the car – tightly, adoringly, with every inch of the feelings she held in her soul but couldn’t say out loud. She held him with no intention of ever letting go. “You feel so good, baby.”

Her only response was a breathy sigh, his name angelic on her lips like a sinner’s final prayer. She felt as though she’d melted down with him inside her, become one with him and the couch and the beauty of this place, her entire body nothing but a vial of electrifying, glorious pleasure. Why had they wasted five months hating each other? Why hadn’t they gotten drunk together sooner? They could have been doing this since _September_ , dammit.

She felt herself edging closer to oblivion as his hips began moving erratically, as his steadiness faltered. It was clear from the animalistic edge to his groans that he wasn’t going to last much longer. And neither, she realized as she felt her walls closing around him and cried out, was she.

“Take me with you,” she begged, her voice raw. “Please, Marcus, I – _oh, God_ , I – rub my - “

He knew what she was asking even though there hadn’t been enough left of her brainpower to ask a question.

His touch was a clumsy kind of expert, finding that nerve center where their bodies were one and pressing down, stroking her, teasing her and kissing her and rubbing her until the waves of her orgasm crashed down and pulled her under. And she came with desperate gasps of his name into the night air, where they dissipated and bounced off the white walls of his apartment and the artsy paintings and remained for as long as Marcus Kane lived there.

And he spilled over inside her only a heartbeat later, a gentle groan that didn’t match the muted grunts emerging from between his parted lips. Then they collapsed into each other, holding each other as though they were the only things in the world that mattered, boneless and beautiful and broken and whole all at once.


	13. Of Bedrooms and Banana Crepes

Abby faded in and out of a light doze for the next hour, waking up just long enough to pepper Marcus with a few kisses and murmur a few words he couldn’t understand through the fog of his own drowsiness. But despite his exhaustion, the pleasure that hummed through his body like a musical refrain, he couldn’t make himself fall asleep.

For one thing, the couch wasn’t big enough for both of them. They hadn’t made it to his bed – no, tonight hadn’t gone exactly how he imagined, he hadn’t gotten to cover his bed with rose petals for her or light those scented candles he’d been idiotic enough to go out to the store and buy – but he wouldn’t have changed a single thing about how it happened. Because it was unpredictable, it was beautiful, it was amazing, it was _them_.

He stroked her hair as she snuggled closer to him, pressing her head to his chest as she lay flush against his side. His skin still smelled of sweat from their lovemaking and her hair was damp with her own, but despite that scent of salt and sex he couldn’t stop thinking about how breathtaking she was. Like this, the angles of her face highlighted by the shimmering lights of the city and the pale light of the moon, she resembled a woodland creature: a nymph, perhaps. And she was his, and he was hers.

Abby trembled in her sleep, and he realized she must have been freezing. For him, this temperature was fine, comfortable even. He was used to sleeping in the cold. But for her, a tiny woman who weighed no more than 110 pounds soaking wet, this would be too much if they stayed the night like this. His body wouldn’t be enough to keep her warm. She shouldn’t have to endure this, not when he had a perfectly good bed two rooms over.

Taking her shoulder gently in his hand, he shook her lightly until he saw her bleary, beautiful brown eyes. She leaned in and kissed him, slowly and deeply, as if drinking him in and savoring him.

He’d never get enough of this as long as he lived.

“Hey,” she whispered, her voice thick with sleep. He brushed a few strands of hair away from her eyes, and she caught his hand to pin it under hers, kept it trapped against the side of her face.

“Hey,” he responded, brushing his lips against the bridge of her nose. She smiled a sleepy smile. This woman was different and yet, paradoxically, the same woman he’d always known. She was carefree and caring, light and happy, not weighed down by her responsibilities and the ghosts in her past. She held his heart in her hands without knowing it – or after tonight, perhaps she did – and instead of taking it and running away, she gave him hers in exchange.

He swallowed hard, feeling that familiar lump rising in his throat again for no good reason.

“It’s snowing,” he heard her murmur as she shifted in his arms, turning over so she faced the window. “I didn’t know it was supposed to snow tonight.”

And sure enough, when he raised his head enough to look out the window he realized it was, indeed, snowing. Large snowflakes floated down from the heavens, coating the city in a layer of fluffy white, and judging by the amount that had accumulated on the lower ledge of his windowsill it had been going for awhile.

“Neither did I,” he admitted, wondering why the hell he’d thought to buy candles and rose petals but not to check the weather.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind being snowed in,” she observed, the low, rich register of her voice making his cock twitch. No, he wasn’t doing this again. Not when she was this tired. She needed rest, not…maybe they could do this again in the morning.

“The circumstances are a little different this time,” he said, and she turned back to him with a grin that made his heart ache.

“Well, there’s nothing illegal about this time,” she said. The last part of her phrase was drawn out by a delicate yawn, and he could tell how exhausted she’d become. It had been a long, wonderful day for them both.

As much as he enjoyed laying here with her and watching the snowflakes drift down toward the asphalt, he knew that wasn’t the best thing for her. If she stayed out here, she’d catch a cold. And he wasn’t about to have her get sick under his watch.

“Come on,” he insisted. “I’ll take you to bed.”

She raised her eyebrows, the right corner of her lip quirking up in that smirk that drove him crazy. “Well, if you insist,” she said. “You’re _insatiable_ , Marcus Kane.”

He chuckled and pressed a chaste kiss to her mouth. “Not for that,” he said. “Not right now. You need to rest. And if we stay out here, we’ll both wake up with a cold tomorrow.”

She frowned a little, the shadows on her face lengthening. She sounded for all the world like a petulant child, a little girl desperate to get her way. “But I’m not tired.”

“Abby, you just slept for an hour.”

The cushions shifted as she propped herself up on an elbow, found the little digital clock on the oven in his kitchen as it glowed from across the room. This wasn’t information she wanted to hear, obviously. But in true Abby Griffin fashion, she managed to spin it in her favor.

“It’s not _too_ late, though. And now we’re both up, and I feel fine. We have some time before we need to get back to sleep.”

She began peppering kisses to his neck, his chest, slowly began sliding her leg overtop of his.

“You said _I’m_ the insatiable one,” he noted, and she laughed against his skin.

“Hmmmmmm. Actually, I’d say we’re equally guilty on that.”

Eventually her kisses made their way back to his lips, and she nibbled gently on his lower lip as their hips locked.

“What do you think?” she whispered, knowing fully well what she was doing to him. _Damn you, Abby._ “Do you still just want to go back to sleep?”

“You’re winning me over,” he murmured. But he knew if he let her get much farther than this his resolve would weaken, and they wouldn’t even make it to bed. Again. So instead of succumbing to his baser instincts he raised himself off the couch and, before she even had a chance to be confused, slid off the smooth surface and gathered her in his arms.

She gave a tiny yelp of surprise at his boldness, wrapped her arms loosely around his neck as he supported her legs. She kept kissing him all the way to his bedroom, breathing his name against his mouth with a voice that was somehow both airy and sensual, soft but alluring. It wasn’t a lengthy journey to his room – just down the hallway, in fact – but he drew it out a little, walked a little slower, relishing having her so close and the unburdened smile on her face. A smile that he had caused. A smile just for him.

He still wouldn’t be able to bother with the candles and rose petals – at one in the morning, he wasn’t sure he was even coherent enough to go rummaging through his kitchen cabinets to find the matches - but that was of little consequence now. Gently, he deposited her on the white comforter that covered his king-size mattress, paused to take a mental picture of this moment.

Of her, just like this, her skin a golden bronze against the foggy whiteness of his bed, her smile brighter than the sun. It wasn’t borne of a desire to remember every inch of her naked skin, her unmistakable beauty without a stitch of clothing; truly, that wasn’t where her beauty came from. With her lying back against the bed in which he’d lain alone for years, spent entire nights staring at the ceiling and watching the shadows dance along the walls, she was the last piece to a puzzle he thought he’d never solve. She was the final line of code that made his heart work again, she was the first ray of sunshine after a thunderstorm.

She hadn’t even touched him, but he felt breathless. Abby Griffin would’ve been the first person to deny that she was perfect, but he could stare at her forever and never find a single flaw.

“What?” she asked him with a tiny laugh, and he realized he must have been staring. Even without the corset there was something magnetic about her. There was something in the way she talked, the way she raised her eyebrows and licked her lips that contained a sensuality all its own, a mysterious magnetism he’d never seen in another woman and was convinced he’d never see again. It should have embarrassed him, he knew, the power over him she held. But instead of mortification, he felt only adoration.

“It’s nothing,” he said as she stretched out, yawned. Then it was his turn to raise his eyebrows, give her a skeptical glance as she clamped her mouth shut, realized what her treacherous body had just betrayed: her own exhaustion.

“I’m not tired,” she said, deep in denial. But she yawned again, quietly, turning away from him as if angling her head away would make it impossible for him to tell how she was feeling.

“Abby,” he sighed, making the decision to climb into bed and turn down the covers, motioning for her to climb in next to him. He lay next to her instead of on top of her, wrapped his arms around her instead of covering her tiny form with his own. “This is nothing that can’t wait until morning. Unless Clarke’s given you a curfew I don’t know about?”

She gave a sleepy giggle, trailed her fingers over his chest as she lay her head over his heart. He could feel every breath that whistled through her lungs and their inhales and exhales became one – their hearts beat and lungs filled as one.

“She won’t be home until the afternoon. She’s at a sleepover of her own.”

Marcus frowned, certain she wasn’t meaning exactly what she said. Hurriedly, as if she knew where his mind had gone, she elaborated. “Not like that! Raven intervened. She wanted to give us some time to ourselves.”

“I’ll have to thank her, then,” Marcus smiled, remembering how adamant she’d been about their situation when she’d fixed Abby’s car. He’d sooner freeze to death in the snow than give her the intimate details of the evening, but he could at the very least thank her for giving him a push in the right direction. Without her encouragement, he very well might have been staring at the ceiling tonight instead of the angel in his arms.

“Please don’t,” Abby groaned, burying her face in his chest. “Her ego doesn’t need any more inflation, Marcus. She’s happy enough with herself as it is. I’m expecting a text from her tomorrow morning asking me to rate the sex on a scale of one to ten.”

He let a quiet little laugh slip past his lips, pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “And what would you rate it?”

She grinned, offered him a wink that sent a surge of sensation to a part of him he really, really needed to stay dormant right now. For both of their sakes. “As of right now? Ten. You could raise that number, though. Earn extra credit.”

“I always prided myself on taking advantage of every opportunity,” he murmured, running his fingers up and down the small of her back, drumming them against her spine.

“Right,” Abby said, as if his statement were a self-explanatory truth instead of his attempt at drowsily flirting. “I forgot about your _almost_ -4.0.”

“What’s my deadline, then?” he asked, still idly stroking the soft skin just above the swell of her ass. His hand ached to slip under the covers, to touch her there again, but his head won out and he stayed in safe territory.

“For what?” Abby asked, and that was how he knew she was tired. Energized Abby Griffin would’ve had a response ready to go.

“The extra credit,” he said, thinking this was the best use of the phrase he’d ever spoken, even if it was a double entendre that would make him cringe in the daylight. He’d never be able to think of extra credit the same way again. “What time should I turn it in by?”

She grinned, shifted in the moonlight so she could nuzzle his neck. The warmth of her breathing made his heart skip, and as his arm came up to wrap around her he wondered if this, this wholly innocently exposed scene, could possibly be even more intimate than what they’d shared on the couch an hour before.

“Let’s say noon. If you’re going to earn anything higher than ten out of ten, you’re going to have to get it done by then.”

There was an undeniable truth in her words that despite Marcus’ best efforts to lock it away and shove it to the back of his consciousness, it managed to bubble to the surface. If they were going to have each other again tomorrow – and that answer seemed to be a profound ‘yes’ – they’d have to do it sooner rather than later.

Because this perfect moment was just that: a moment. She would go back to Arkadia to her house with her daughter and her friends and her family, and he would go back to his quiet apartment in which the lack of her would now be a palpable thing, a hole in his chest. And he’d spend tomorrow night looking up at the ceiling again, imaging this little piece of heaven that he’d been given for a few hours. No amount of kissing or touching or murmured words could keep her by his side for the rest of eternity, not when she had a full life to which she’d return.

He’d miss her.

And to some extent he knew it was foolish – he’d see her at the beginning of the school day, he’d see her at lunch, they’d probably walk to their cars together and she might even sneak a quick kiss before striding across the parking lot to her weathered Toyota. But Arkadia High School was a different world, and they were different people in public than they were in this bed. There was a version of themselves they gave to their students, a version of themselves they gave to their colleagues, and a version of themselves they gave only to each other.

When it came to Abby, he loved every single one. His heart belonged to the teacher who stumbled into class five minutes before the bell rang, coffee in one hand and a smile plastered on her lips despite the bags under her eyes. His heart belonged to the woman whose laugh he could hear through his doorway as she chatted with Callie Cartwig about their respective weekends. His heart belonged to the woman who loved her daughter and Raven with every beat of her own, the woman who’d stop the world to keep Clarke safe and happy.

And his heart was completely lost to the woman in his arms now, the woman whose love he knew he didn’t deserve but couldn’t dream of letting go.

He’d noticed how she acted around Thelonious, the way her smile froze and her composure turned wintry. Something had happened there, something less-than-ideal, but he wasn’t going to ask her what it was. Not until she was ready to tell him. In good time, he thought, she would. But no good could come of rushing her, especially not when the only thing he wanted was to stop the hands of time from guiding them into the future.

So he pulled the covers up around her shoulders, kissed her forehead, heard her breathing even out as her hold on him relaxed just a fraction. And then, when he was certain she was lost in the embrace of a dreamless slumber, he whispered the three little words that filtered directly from his heart, unbidden by the restraints of his mind or the tremulous expanse of the future.

 

***

 

That morning was the first in over a year that Abby Griffin awoke with a smile.

Her body still hummed with the ghost of last night, her muscles ached with a sort of sweet, blissful oblivion that she knew only came from being with someone about whom you truly cared. A sensation that only arose from cementing something unspoken but powerful, entwining hearts and hands and bodies to make physical the words they couldn’t yet utter.

The bed was colder than when she’d fallen asleep, and she rolled over in the sea of softness to find him gone. For a heartbeat, she felt a dull panic; she was reasonably certain Marcus wouldn’t leave her, but where had he gone? Had they talked about something last night at dinner that she’d been too distracted to remember?

Then she heard the clicking and banging of pots in the kitchen, breathed in the tantalizing scent of scrambled eggs and bananas, and realized what he was doing.

Marcus Kane was making her breakfast.

It was amazing, she thought as she bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling, how you could know someone and never really know them at all. How you could spend five months despising everything about a person, from their meticulously groomed hair to their smooth voice and their uptight attitude, and then suddenly realize everything you thought you knew about them was wrong. A lie fabricated in the depths of your heart based on erroneous first impressions and an unyielding need to be certain, to take a flicker of ten seconds and fan them into a roaring fire or hate and lust and love.

But in those little uncertainties and flickers, she’d found him. The real Marcus Kane.

She glanced over at the clock beside his bed, was informed it was almost ten. Abby couldn’t remember the last time she’d allowed herself to sleep past eight, let alone ten o’clock. This was a new experience, what most people would’ve referred to as a ‘lazy Sunday morning’ and she found the experience not wholly disagreeable.

On a normal Sunday she would’ve woken up, showered, gotten started on laundry or dishes from the night before, made herself some coffee and sat down with a bowl of oatmeal and the paper. But this Sunday she slid out of Marcus Kane’s tantalizingly comfortable bed, grabbed a t-shirt he had hanging off a hook on the backside of his door and pulled it over her head. It was burgundy brownish and soft as silk, and it occurred to her as she made her way toward the kitchen, her toes digging in against the plush blue carpet in his hallway, that she might not be giving it back.

Her first view of him was a dark gray robe hunched over a stove, completely unaware of her presence. The air smelled sweet and ripe with chopped fruit as a fan whirred overhead – it was no surprise he hadn’t noticed her over all the commotion – and she decided to say something before her growling stomach announced her presence for her.

“Morning,” she said with a smile. Usually these kinds of things had the potential to be almost unbearably awkward – at least in college they had been. But with Marcus there was an almost predicable rhythm to their interactions, a comfortable consistency that felt as natural as putting on her favorite pair of jeans or opening the pages of her favorite novel. There was nothing awkward about this, about him, about them.

He turned around with a sunrise of a smile, his eyes sparkling with delight. There was something endearing, she thought, about seeing him like this; wearing a bathrobe, his hair mussed, his beard slightly scraggly. This was a side of Marcus Kane that Arkadia would never get to see – this Marcus Kane was hers, and hers only.

She wanted to keep him.

“Morning,” he said, watching her as she sat down in one of the bar stools on the opposite side of the counter from him. “I’m making banana crepes, I hope that’s all right with you. If there’s something else you’d like, I could probably change it-“

“Banana crepes sound great,” Abby said. “That’s one of my favorites, actually.”

Her stomach growled as she finished her sentence, ending her statement with tangible evidence of how starving she’d become. And crepes had always been one of her favorite breakfast foods, even if her kitchen ended up looking like an explosion of flour and butter afterward and she never managed to get the ratio of ingredients quite right. Judging by the smells wafting over to her from the stovetop, Marcus had a better handle on it than she ever would.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked as he poured some batter into a pan, gave her a quick glance as he waited for the crepe to set.

“Absolutely,” she responded in a low voice, accentuating every syllable, leaning forward on the counter. She knew she couldn’t possibly look sexy, not after sleeping the whole night in his bed and not taking off any of her makeup, but the smoldering look he gave her made her think he was considering ditching the crepes and tearing that shirt off her right then and there. _Oh, you’re definitely the insatiable one._

“How much time do I have?” he asked. He flipped the crepe and turned back to her, eyebrows raised. The first thing she felt was not arousal, but confusion – time for what?

Then she remembered their conversation last night, the deal she’d made with him in hushed tones and through her own concealed fatigue. The extra credit. It was 10:30 right now, which meant…

“An hour and a half.”

He deposited the crepe onto a white china plate next to the pan, placing it on top of another she hadn’t noticed until then. If there were already two crepes, she wouldn’t feel bad about distracting him – most of his work was done.

So she slid off the stool and walked around the counter, joining him at the stove. Adorably, he was so focused on stirring whatever was in the other pan – the filling for the crepes, probably – that he didn’t even notice she’d moved. His fixation was endearing, but Abby had other, sweeter things on her mind than those banana crepes.

So instead of playing nice, instead of staying behind the counter and letting him finish his work, she wrapped her arms around him from behind and pressed herself close. It would only take one good tug to get his robe to fall open, one tug to send it falling to the floor. And as far as she could tell, he wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. On a whim she slipped a hand underneath the area where the fabric parted over his chest, placing a hand over his heart, relaxing into him as she rested her forehead against his back.

Marcus gave a low hum of contentment, placing the spoon he’d been using on the stovetop to rest his hand over hers.

“The filling’s almost done,” he said. “Five more minutes, at most.”

Abby was thankful he was facing away from her – that way, he couldn’t see her childish pout. Five minutes would feel like several lifetimes, like an eternity and a half, like eons.

“Unless you’d rather just eat breakfast?” Abby suggested as she withdrew her hand, wondering if he’d changed his mind. Just because he’d asked didn’t mean he was convinced. Maybe he would rather just eat their meal like a normal couple and not go for a second round, let last night be last night and this morning be this morning.

He shifted in her arms after a few moments, moved the heat on the burner to ‘low’ and turned around to face her. She couldn’t help but look down for just an instant, her gaze falling on a telltale bulge just below his hips. _Oh._ He hadn’t changed his mind.

“Abby,” he sighed, slipping a few fingers beneath her chin and drawing her up to him for a kiss. “The filling’s done now.”

And before she could deepen the kiss he’d pushed her back against the counter, leaning into her the same way they’d done just days ago at her house, with all the urgency they’d felt then and the desperation they felt now. She ground her hips against his, creating a fiery friction between the hem of her shirt and his bathrobe and his erection that made him hiss. A cry escaped her lips as his hands closed around her hips, a firm pressure through the shirt she’d claimed as her own. He lifted her suddenly, depositing her on top of the counter with a soft, painless _thud_.

Part of her was almost amused – _the kitchen counter, Marcus? Really?_ – after all, this lack of decorum was coming from the man who flat-out insisted on preserving themselves for his apartment and not giving in to each other in his car. But he, Marcus “ _not here, Abby_ ” Kane, was okay with the kitchen counter. Even she could see the irony in that, and she wasn’t an English teacher.

But part of her was already relinquishing the ability to think straight, letting out a soft moan as she pulled him closer with the pressure of her legs around his hips. She reached down to untie his robe, pushing the plush material off his shoulders, watching with dilated pupils and a racing heart as it fell to the floor. His physique was all the more impressive in daylight, and she blushed as he caught her staring. Thankfully, he didn’t make a comment.

“This looks much better on you than it does on me,” he murmured, his beard pricking against the sensitive skin of her neck. His fingers slid beneath the hem of the garment, stroking her inner thighs with a cashmere-soft caress, and the contrast between his beard and his hands drew a moan from between her lips. “I think you should keep it, Abby.”

Where most men would’ve sounded self-assured – after all, he’d managed to get her on top of the counter, he was standing between her legs, pressing open-mouthed kisses to her collarbone, her neck, her jaw – Marcus still managed to make his statement sound like a question. She realized he was still giving her a choice. If she didn’t want his shirt, if she didn’t want this – whatever this was – she only had to say so. One word and he’d back away, help her down from the counter, and they’d both get on with their lives.

What would it take, she wondered, to convince this banana crepe of a man that his shirt was only the first of a long list of things she wanted to share with him? That going on a date to a fancy restaurant and cuddling and having sex on a kitchen counter was in no way an exhaustive list of the things she saw them doing together?

What a beautiful, stupid, sweet man.

Abby grinned, ran her fingers through his hair to draw his attention back up to her face. “I’d like that,” she said, hoping those three words could convey the extent of the meaning behind them.

Because keeping his shirt meant more than just taking the garment into her house with her – it was a piece of him, a tangible thing, a token of his presence. It would keep him in her arms when life held them apart, when she had things to do and he had things to do and they couldn’t do them together. This shirt, this incredibly extraordinary ordinary burgundy shirt, was the glue that would hold him by her side even when he was an hour away.

His expression mirrored hers – drunk with lust and adoration, eyes shining with a thousand things he couldn’t name – and when he leaned in to kiss her she parted her lips from the moment they met, tasting a hint of banana crème on his tongue and a sugary sweetness all his own.

She helped him guide the shirt over her head, being careful not to rip it as they’d torn her underwear the night before. Her heart had already claimed it as hers, as a thing she’d be keeping for the foreseeable future, and there was no way in hell she’d allow their lovemaking to ruin it. The underwear had been one thing – replaceable, disposable. This was another.

Her fingers closed around the material as soon as they’d freed her from it, and she stopped kissing him just long enough to hastily fold it. There was something to be said for tossing it across the room with abandon, for being so frantic to consume each other that she couldn’t take the five seconds to not be as close to him as she possibly could. But if she’d thrown it the wrong way, if it had caught on something and torn, she wouldn’t have forgiven herself.

He ran his fingertips up and down her shoulders and upper arms as she placed it on the opposite side of the counter, and when she turned back to him he was grinning, wearing that same expression she’d seen when he’d looked at her in his bed. It was lustful, certainly, but there was more to it than that – it had an intensity not besmirched by physical desire. His brown eyes were playful and weighted and sparkling and solemn all at once, and she swallowed hard as she attempted to interpret his gaze.

“What?” she asked, repeating her words from last night, the warmth of his touch sparking the appearance of goosebumps all over her body.

And he gave her the same damn response.

“Nothing,” he whispered as his hands drifted toward her hips and around to her ass, pressing down just enough to make her gasp. And Abby knew it wasn’t nothing, it couldn’t be nothing, but she also knew she was sitting on a countertop with a man who’d somehow managed to convince her, a doctor, that having sex this close to a still-cooling stove was nothing to worry about. Yet, as his mouth trailed hot, wet kisses down her neck and trailed his tongue along the valley between her breasts, she decided to let it be nothing. For now. He’d tell her, she thought, when the time was right.

The countertop proved an unreliable place to put her hands, she found. The stone was too slippery and her sweaty palms wouldn’t find purchase there- so, already soaked for him, her breaths coming in short, feeble gasps, she wrapped her arms underneath his and settled her fingers between his shoulder blades.

She couldn’t reach all the way around him, she discovered with some amusement – just another awkward trial-and-error experience of frantically coupling on a countertop with a man whose very presence was like a drug in her veins – but neither of them paid much attention to their differing sizes, not when he had the advantage in height but she the edge in fire.

His hands trembled as he explored her, one stroking the underside of her left thigh while the other roamed her body, touching, teasing, finding the places that made her moan and sigh. All the while he kept kissing her, his mouth a scratchy, blissful constant, and God if he didn’t get things moving soon she thought she might spontaneously combust. Her hips bucked as she parted her lips for a long, low groan, the heat between her thighs becoming nearly unbearable.

“Marcus,” she sighed, and she felt him smiling (he was enjoying torturing her like this, drawing her as close to the edge as possible and then shoving her back, what an _asshole_ ) as his fingers moved to cup her breasts, giving her a gentle pinch that felt an addictively pleasuring kind of painful, a reminder that the things she’d felt – her pain, her sadness, her regret – were just things that made her human, things that had brought her to this point and made her his.

As she caught one of his hands and guided it lower, moved it along her toned stomach and toward the pulsing, throbbing center where she needed him, her feet caught on the wooden cabinets beneath their makeshift bed. The gesture slammed one of those oak doors closed, and they paused long enough for a stunned jump and a self-conscious giggle.

There was a moment of startled self-awareness where it seemed to dawn on them both exactly what they were doing – fucking mindlessly against a common household object, a place where Marcus put his _food_ , for God’s sake – and Abby felt herself grinning stupidly as she repeated his words back to him.

“Practice makes perfect.”

Then, deciding she’d suffered long enough, she reached down and, after stroking him enough to make him give a guttural groan of surprise, guided his iron-hard length inside of her.

The angle of entry changed _everything_ , and she cried out as he stretched her, filling her completely. If she’d thought last night had been world-shattering, had been powerful, it was nothing compared to the sheer rush of simmering, pulsating pleasure she felt now. For several moments the only things in the world were Marcus, his coarsely soft hands sliding from her thighs to her waist, supporting her and holding her and shielding her from the other thing that still existed: the coolness of the counter. Not that she was uncomfortable. She’d stopped feeling anything resembling cold from the moment their lips met.

But at this was special in a new way, sensual in all its banana-scented casualness. This was a connection made of sunlight and informal intimacy instead of starlight and seduction. This didn’t smell like perfume or taste like white wine, but it was luxurious in its own way, an imperfect kind of perfection. And as he began moving inside her, stifling his own quiet groans of pleasure as her walls closed around him and his hips stuttered, finding a rhythm and slowly, lazily adhering to it.

They breathed as one, sighed as one, a melting, humming union of lips on lips and skin on skin. She got the sense that he listened to her, that every sound she made brought him closer to oblivion, that the simple act of giving her pleasure would be enough to make him come, too. Because this wasn’t about tearing underwear or sliding tongues beneath corsets; this was about exploration, sensation, adoration.

Those three little words bubbled just below the surface as she opened her eyes, her vision blurred around the edges from the sheer sensation of him. His face was flushed, his lips a deep, swollen red from kissing her, his breaths coming in shallow pants and low, animalistic moans. She sensed he might be holding back, unsure what she wanted, afraid to push too far for fear of making her fall. And that, she realized through her pleasure-addled haze, was the essence of Marcus Kane. He wouldn’t let her fall.

 _“I’ll always catch you,”_ he’d said on that snowy night, and he’d meant it. Though she hadn’t known to what extent back then, he’d meant it.

“Marcus,” she whispered against his open mouth, brushing her tongue against his and tasting the tingly saltiness of his sweat. His rhythm was faltering, his grip on her tightening, his pulse quickening, and she didn’t know how much longer he’d last. Just the sight of him like this – completely wrecked for her – was enough to bring her to the edge, too, to force a breathy cry from her lips as he reached the place inside her that made her toes curl.

Frantic, she dug her fingertips into his back, begging him for more in a series of pleas and gasps and murmurs. And he gave her more, he gave her everything, and between his uneven withdrawing and filling her completely and his lips on her neck and his fingers stroking her clit she was beginning to wonder if she’d pass out before she came.

“Oh, _Abby_ ,” he moaned, her name a guttural prayer, pressing deeper into her as he spilled over and sighed. There was something in the way he said it – reverent, hypnotic, mesmerizing – that brought the fire between her legs to a fever pitch and the waves of her orgasm crashing down to cool it. And she was praying his name with as much devotion as he worshipped hers, seeing stars, her entire body freezing and melting and trembling as her hips bucked, desperate to prolong the intoxicating sensation of him.

And when it was over, their breaths evening out against each other’s sex-soaked skin as they came back to reality, she leaned in to give him a gentle kiss and whisper, “You earned your extra credit.”


	14. Of Poetry and Plaid Scarves

“What poem did Miller pick for today?” Octavia asked as she and Jasper walked to class. As an English teacher’s son, he had no lack of poetry knowledge – or so she assumed. He hadn’t exactly volunteered for the position, but Octava could be very convincing when she needed to be. And as much as she hated to admit it, Murphy had a point – nothing was going to happen between Kane and Mrs. Griffin unless they stepped in and forced it to happen.

“Fuck if I know,” Jasper muttered, shrugging his shoulder to keep his slipping backpack from falling onto the floor. “I’m pretty sure he told me he was Googling ‘popular love poems’ and picking whatever came up first. A real scientific method.”

Octavia froze, her face contorted with rage. “What the _hell_? Am I the only one taking this seriously?”

Jasper stopped too, unfazed by her shouting. “Hey,” he said, guiding her off to the side of the hallway so a few terrified freshmen could successfully evade a fuming Octavia Blake. Even they understood the youngest Blake’s rage was a force of hell when unleashed.

“I don’t think Griffin’s gonna catch on,“ Jasper reassured her. “There’s a reason she’s a science teacher. And even if she did, what would it prove? Maybe Kane’s just looking up love poems on the internet. Wouldn’t surprise me. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s not exactly a touchy-feely kinda guy.”

Dropping her head to her hands, Octavia swore Nathan Miller would have hell to pay when she saw him at lunch. “I noticed. But I know Kane’s not the kind of guy who’d half-ass this, either. I don’t think he’d resort to Google. If Mrs. Griffin finds out, she’s gonna know it’s not him. And then we’re screwed.”

Jasper nodded, finally understanding the root of her frustration. “So you’re pissed that Miller’s half-assing this. I get it. I’ll have Monty talk to him. Dude seems to listen to him more than me for some reason.”

Octavia thanked him, took a quick glance at the clock. They had a few minutes to spare before class started, and part of her wanted to storm into Kane’s classroom and give Miller a piece of her mind. But Kane was already there, and there would be no good way to conceal her purpose in invading his space without revealing their operation. For the moment, Nathan Miller was safe.

“Monty and I were wondering, though,” Jasper began, and Octavia felt a frown forming across her brow. Nothing good came from a statement beginning with ‘ _Monty and I were wondering_.’ “Why do you care so much about whether or not Kane and Griffin hook up? I get that it’s fun to mess with them. It’s something for us to do, and they’re both fucking oblivious. But we think for you…is it more than that?”

Her jaw clenched and she swallowed hard. There were two ways to answer Jasper Jordan’s question; one that was slightly less than truthful but would keep her safe, and one that bared the truth, but at what cost?

In all honesty, part of her investment in Kane and Griffin was because she hadn’t had parents that loved each other – or a dad that stuck around past the night of her conception, probably – and it was clear to everyone in a 20-mile-radius of the school how those two idiots felt about each other. Kane might as well have had ‘I love Abby Griffin’ scrawled across his forehead every time he looked at her, and her science teacher got all red-faced and started stuttering every time someone mentioned the man who taught across the hallway. One night stands were one thing, but this didn’t match that criteria. Not anymore. A week had passed, and they were still acting the same.

Was it stupid of her to actually want them to be happy? Everyone who’d been at Arkadia knew how deeply Jake’s death had affected her. The cheery, happy, light Mrs. Griffin had taken a vacation after that and hadn’t returned until last week. It was refreshing to see her smile again – not the canned smile she’d given them for months, the voice filtered through artificial contentment - but a real, genuine smile. No matter how much she disguised her motives under the guise of mischief-making, Octavia would always feel warmth in seeing Mrs. Griffin happy again.

But she’d sooner never speak another word than tell Jasper that.

“No. I’m just trying to keep you idiots in line,” she muttered as they leaned against the chipped yellow lockers on the opposite side of the hall from the teachers’ classrooms. “Someone has to.”

In response Jasper leaned over and bumped her shoulder with his, sending her careening into the path of oncoming student traffic. She tripped, almost lost her balance, ricocheted off a few freshmen and landed on her feet.

“I might be an idiot,” he said through laughs, “but at least I watch where I’m walking!”

Octavia couldn’t keep herself from smirking. After all, what was true friendship if not shoving each other into the early morning student traffic rush?

            But he’d have to watch his back on his way to second period.

***

Octavia strode to the front of the classroom, anticipating the lecture she’d get from Mrs. Griffin over forgetting her lab assignment. Well, it wasn’t so much that she’d forgotten. She’d known damn well it was due today. But Lincoln had been in town this weekend, and school took a backseat to the boyfriend she was only able to see three times a year because of college. _Ugh._

So the lab assignment hadn’t gotten done. Sue her. She’d have it finished tomorrow or Wednesday, and however many points she got docked she’d get docked. It wasn’t exactly a pressing concern.

But that didn’t mean this was a conversation she wanted to have.

“Mrs. Griffin?” she started, trying to sound authoritative yet somewhat humble. To come on strong, but not too strong. She wasn’t trying to fail the assignment, here.

Her teacher turned in her swivel chair, and for the tiniest of moments Octavia could see what she’d been looking at. At first glance they looked like lesson plans – a calendar, a scattered maze of faded post-it notes - but perched atop the planner sat Miller’s most recent addition to the Kane love poem anthology, written in a impeccable imitation of his government teacher’s handwriting.

Okay, maybe she’d have to cut Miller a little bit of slack. He might be a little negligent, but he was a gifted forger.

And the fact that Mrs. Griffin was holding onto the notes instead of tossing them into the trash…that had to mean something, right? She didn’t strike Octavia as a highly sentimental type; she still wore her husband’s ring, but her office wasn’t plastered with pictures of her family or anything. She had a picture of Clarke, a picture of her and Jake, but that was it.

But, more recently, she’d added the “Marcus” poem. That was important. It had to be.

“Good morning, Octavia,” Abby greeted her, doing her best to muster an energetic smile at 7:30 in the morning. That was an expression her face sorely refused to make, even after downing two cups of coffee. She’d slept well in Marcus’s shirt last night – no, she wasn’t ashamed to admit she slept in his shirt, wasn’t that a thing most people in relationships did? – but he’d been right about Saturday night: she’d been exhausted. And now, during the work week, that exhaustion was sinking its claws into her like never before.

“I, uh, don’t have my lab assignment for today,” Octavia muttered, leaning back against the ledge on the side of the wall. “I should have it done for Wednesday, though.”

As always, Mrs. Griffin had managed to look put together and composed – her hair in a side braid, her slim figure accentuated by a tan cable-knit sweater, a black knee-length skirt, and a plaid scarf that tied her whole outfit together. Octavia Blake had never been too fashion-oriented, but even with her jeans-and-a-sweatshirt taste she had to admire Mrs. Griffin’s. Her style, while more feminine than Octavia would prefer, had a whole lot of kick-ass built into it.

The scarf, especially, looked nice. It looked warm, well-suited for their frigid conditions, almost like it was meant for wearing outdoors and not inside the halls of a school. Come to think of it…it was a winter scarf.

Why was she wearing a winter scarf indoors, anyway? Arkadia wasn’t _that_ cold. Thanks to a generous donation from Roan Azgeda, they had some working heaters again. And it wasn’t like the tan sweater she was wearing was too thin to keep her warm.

She had a theory, but she didn’t feel comfortable explaining it to Jasper until she knew for sure. No point in getting their hopes up and then pushing them down again.

“Well, I’ll have to take off five percentage points since you missed the deadline,” Mrs. Griffin explained as Octavia fixated on her scarf. “But as long as you turn in quality work, I don’t think your grade will be impacted.”

If there was a way to get her to stand up, she might get a better angle on the skin beneath the garment. Then she’d be able to tell whether or not there was really something to see, a conclusion to be made. For now, all she really knew was that it was hella suspicious. Mrs. Griffin didn’t usually wear scarves.

 _Make it happen,_ she told herself, both motivated and annoyed by Murphy’s statement echoing in her head. There had to be a way to make it happen, to get her to take off the scarf. But how? What could she do that required her first-hour Anatomy teacher to take off a key part of her outfit at 7:30 in the morning?

Her gaze fell on a few motivational posters on the opposite side of the room, plastered on the wall next to her lab table. Materials had been lain out on the surface, evidence that they’d have an experiment to complete today. Usually, Octavia would’ve been reluctant: she’d much rather sit in her seat and text underneath the table than be forced to get up, move around, and record results. But today, she realized, the lab might just be the excuse she needed.

“Thank you,” Octavia said, both to her teacher and to her brain for giving her something resembling a plan. She moved back to her seat with a spring in her step as Abby turned back to her desk, sat down in her plastic chair and pulled her phone from her backpack with urgency.

 **Hey** , she wrote, sent, and glanced over to hear Jasper’s phone buzz on his desk. He picked up, read the message, gave her a frown.

** Hey? **

He aimed a confused glance her way, expecting more than just a single word. Pondering how best to propose her idea, Octavia mulled over her next text for twenty seconds longer than she’d intended. If she didn’t get things moving soon, they’d have to put away their phones. And then, unless she was very sneaky, Jasper would call her out on it. And then they’d be fucked.

**You know the thermostat next to our lab table?**

Jasper glanced back in their table’s general direction, recognized the dial on the wall.

** Sure, I guess. Why? **

**Because it’s going to get a lot warmer in here today…pretty sure Griffin has a hickey.**

She heard Jasper laughing from across the room, heard Monty snicker a moment later and guessed a message had been sent. She texted him to make sure he was in on the plan – while Mrs. Griffin kept he and Jasper separated for as much time as humanly possible, it seemed wrong to leave him out of the loop. Seconds later, he replied.

_ Do you seriously think she has one, though? _

Octavia looked his way, gave him a noncommittal shrug.

**Idk. I think it’s worth finding out. Might tell us a lot.**

Monty didn’t have time to text her again before the bell rang, and they were forced to put away their phones for fear of having them confiscated. He gave Jasper an air high-five and Octavia a nod, letting them know he approved of their plans. Octavia grinned – finally, despite Miller’s lack of effort, they were getting somewhere.

If Mrs. Griffin had a hickey, well…that could be just the thing they were looking for. Proof that there was something going on between her and – well, her and _someone_ , it didn’t have to be Kane – but every sign pointed to it being him. What with the poem, their conversation last week, and the rumor about them on Miller’s dad’s couch, she didn’t see Mrs. Griffin getting some from anyone else. _If eye-fucking could cause hickeys, Griffin would’ve had one a week ago._

***

Marcus wandered into Abby’s room exactly ten minutes after the last bell rang, counted the seconds until he could see her again. They’d eaten lunch together in his room, talked about their mornings, and she’d chastised him for giving her a noticeable hickey on her neck.

“You’re the reason I’m wearing this today,” she’d said between bites of her salad, equally amused and annoyed as she pointed to the plaid scarf around her neck. “Marcus, you really should’ve thought about it before you gave me this. Makeup can only do so much.”

“I’m sorry, Abby,” he apologized, doing his best to fend off the guilt stirring in his chest. If she’d wanted him to stop, why didn’t she just say so? “In the future, please let me know if you don’t want me to-“

She cut him off with a laugh, held his hand for a tiny moment. Here at school they couldn’t be public about their affection, their relationship. There would be no kisses in front of classes, no holding hands for longer than a heartbeat, nothing to make anyone believe they were anything more than friends. The rumors about the night of the snowstorm had all but blown over, and the last thing they needed to do was re-ignite them with a new brand of fuel.

“Let’s make one thing clear,” she said, her voice low as her brown eyes sparkled. While he knew the scarf was just a disguise, a way to camouflage the purple-red mark on her neck, he thought it brought out a tinge of red in her cheeks and made her eyes all the more alluring. “I didn’t _want_ you to stop.”

He breathed a quiet sigh of relief, his fears evaporating. It was good to know they were on the same page.

 And it was with that memory he proceeded through his day, going through the motions of instructing his class on Steinbeck while taking casual glances across the hallway. He couldn’t hear her, he couldn’t see her, but just knowing she was there was enough.

So he wandered into her room at the end of the school day, his briefcase in one hand and an empty coffee cup in the other, and nearly dropped them both when he crossed the threshold.

“It’s hot in here.”

Abby emerged from the back corner of her classroom, her hair darker than usual and her forehead glimmering with beads of sweat.

“I know. Something’s wrong with the thermostat,” she said. “I thought it was getting warmer during first period, but until sixth I figured it was just me.”

Marcus set his belongings down by the door to join her in the far corner, shedding his jacket and suit coat while he was at it. If he kept them on, he’d be a puddle of sweat in no time.

"No, it’s not just you.”

She tilted her head to the side, gave him a look up and down that made him flush even more than he already had.

“Good to know.”

Another glance at her informed him she’d shed her scarf, and as she stood facing him his handiwork was apparent. The mark wasn’t too distinct – she’d covered it with makeup, probably – but all the same he felt a rush of mixed shame and pride. That mark was a reminder that she was his, that they’d shared something this weekend that neither of them regretted. But at the same time it had been an inconvenience for her, which was something he never aimed to be.

“I can take a look at it,” he said, offering yet another service he had no clue how to provide. And this time, Raven Reyes wouldn’t be able to come to his rescue. But that was something Abby didn’t need to know: not if he could appear a hero to her by fixing her broken thermostat. And besides, how hard could it be? He adjusted the air in his apartment all the time. Theoretically, this should be simple.

“Or I can call Raven. Or get a janitor to do it.”

Marcus raised his eyebrows, stepped closer to her until he could feel the heat radiating from her body. “Are you saying you don’t trust me to do a good job, Doctor Griffin?”

She gave a low chuckle. “A car battery is one thing, but I don’t know how you’d fix this. It’s like someone rewired it or something. I really don’t know what happened to it. At this point, I think our best bet is Raven.”

He must have looked supremely dejected at her refusal, because she leaned in abruptly to press a chaste, warm kiss to his cheek.

“Next time something in my room breaks, I’ll give you a chance to fix it,” she said, her hands sliding up his shoulders to play with the hair at the nape of his neck. They were treading into dangerous waters, being so close with such legitimate chance of discovery, but the sensation of her fingers running through his hair was enough to convince him to do just about anything. “But I don’t want to keep you here,” she added. “Traffic, and all that.”

He shrugged. “I’m not too worried about it. If it’s bad, it gives me more time to listen to the radio. And if it’s good, I’ll get home sooner than I expected. Either way, there’s something to appreciate.”

“Where does your texting habit fit into that?” she asked teasingly, her lips stretching upward into a teasing, adoring smirk.

“Under ‘things to appreciate,” he said, his voice soft as he wrapped his arms around her to pull her close. With the door open he wouldn’t risk a kiss – that could cause trouble for them if they were discovered – but a hug was innocent enough. After all, Mondays were rough at best. Even when the thermostat worked.

“Mrs. Griffin?” a voice sounded from her doorway, and Abby jumped out of his embrace faster than if he’d given her an electric shock.

“Octavia?” Abby said, clearly shocked to find the girl standing in her classroom so late. She turned away from him after giving him one last, longing look, slipping back into teacher mode. “What can I help you with?”

“I…I have my lab assignment,” she said, biting back a grin that threatened to overtake her impish features, and Abby nodded as though this was something they’d previously discussed. Probably, Marcus thought, it was.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to have it until Wednesday?” Abby asked.

“I finished it during study hall,” Octavia explained, still grinning. “There was less to do than I thought.” She paused, rummaged around in her backpack before yanking out a crumpled bundle of stapled papers. “Here.”

Marcus made his way toward the front of the classroom, propelled by some invisible force to join her. Now would’ve been a prime opportunity to start fixing the thermostat – or doing whatever constituted “fixing” to his limited knowledge – but something in the way Octavia was looking at her, looking at him, looking at them…something was off. That wasn’t the way a student looked at her teachers. That was the way a student looked at her peers. Her friends.

Were Abby and Octavia friends? He didn’t think so. She would’ve mentioned it. Not to mention the ramifications of fostering an active friendship with a student outside school premises – they were restricted from interacting with them on social media until they graduated (a fact he’d learned during a staff meeting and never found a use for). And as far as he knew, the younger Blake and Clarke Griffin weren’t exactly close.

“Thank you, Octavia,” Abby said, glancing back at him briefly as he stood behind her. She mouthed something, a pair of words, but Marcus wasn’t accomplished in lip-reading and couldn’t discern what she meant. As if hyperaware of their visitor, Abby whirled back to her after just a moment of allowing their eyes to meet.

“Shit, it’s hot in here,” Octavia said, rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand. “How long has it been like this?”

Abby walked over to her desk, neatly slid the paper into her purse along with what appeared to be a pile of other papers. “Since this morning,” she said, not looking up from the task at hand. “I don’t suppose you know anything about it? If it was John Murphy, I’m going to have to send him to Jaha.”

“It wasn’t Murphy,” Octavia said quickly, her words tumbling out in a rush. _A little too quickly,_ Marcus thought. But it wasn’t his place to say, so he simply regarded the sophomore standing in Abby’s doorway with faint amusement and resigned suspicion. Something was off.

What _had_ Abby tried to tell him?

“I might be able to fix it,” Octavia said, pulling her phone out of her backpack. A few pens and pencils clattered to the floor, but she paid them no mind. Marcus couldn’t help comparing her to her brother: if Bellamy had dropped the contents of his backpack in his search for his phone, he at least would’ve picked them up. This girl was as similar to him as she was different, a paradoxical combination of sameness and diversity. “Let me text Monty and Jasper quick. They know all about this stuff.”

Abby sighed, looked up at her visitor as she zipped her bag shut. “Octavia, you don’t have to-“

Marcus stepped in. “I said I’d fix it, actually.”

That look, again. Octavia glanced from him to her and back to him again, bit her lower lip as she averted her gaze to her phone. “Jasper just texted back,” she announced, ignoring him completely. She shoved her way past him to arrive at the back of the classroom, eyes flaring with her brother’s determination. “I think he must’ve messed it up this morning or something.”

Abby rolled her eyes and Marcus gave her a sympathetic smile. Something told him this was just another typical Monday for Abigail Griffin, Anatomy and Biology teacher. He didn’t envy her having all three of them – the veritable Three Musketeers of Mischief-Making – in her first hour class. Maybe he’d have to start bringing her coffee in the morning for encouragement.

Finished filing Octavia’s assignment, Abby walked to join her student at the back of the class.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked, leaning on the end of the black-countered table. Octavia turned to glance at her for a second, and if Marcus hadn’t known better, known that couldn’t possibly be what Octavia Blake was after, he would’ve sworn her gaze landed on Abby’s neck. On that sensitive spot where there should have been a scarf. On that mark he’d given her.

But there was no way Octavia Blake would care about _that_. Despite what Abby might think, he was confident teenagers had better things to do with their time than meddle in the love lives of their teachers.

“Nope,” Octavia said, turning the dial as a few high-pitched beeps emitted from the device. “It should be all set now. Jasper says he’s sorry.”

Abby’s shoulders slumped in relief, and Marcus felt the temperature in the room begin dropping with the rush of cool air. For once, the cold was a welcome sensation.

“Tell Jasper to watch which wall he leans against next time,” Abby said, firm but kind. “But I’m happy he could help.”

There was no iron behind her gentle reprimand – hell, whatever iron might have existed had long been melted by these tropical conditions. How had she managed to spend an afternoon teaching in this? He would sooner have held class outside than stayed in this sauna.

“Marcus?” another voice sounded, and just as quickly as Abby had begun to relax she was on alert again. He turned toward the door, fully certain who the voice belonged to and yet fighting a curious sense of dread.

“Thelonious,” he said, walking toward the door to greet their second visitor. _Quite a party we’re having after school on a Monday,_ he thought with a twinge of sarcasm. He wasn’t so desperate to be alone with her that he couldn’t handle having people around them – Clarke or Raven would have been perfectly acceptable – but these were two people who threw a wrench in their dynamic, forced them apart as if their very presence were a force field. Weren’t Mondays bad enough already?

“And Octavia Blake,” Thelonious said coolly. The girl stiffened, a mirror of Abby’s posture, and made like a lightning bolt to snatch her backpack from the tile and leave. She gave Abby one last look as she left, a tiny wave.

“See you tomorrow, Mrs. Griffin,” she said, and Abby, striding toward the front of the room with an expression carved from stone, gave Octavia only a slight nod in acknowledgement.

“See you tomorrow,” she said.

They stood in a triangle at the front of her room – Thelonious in the doorway, Abby near her desk, Marcus nearest the window. Something crackled in the arrangement, a palpable electricity, and it was enough to make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“I thought you would have left already,” Abby said, her tone like a fall day – warm enough to qualify as acceptable, but cool enough to make the coming of winter apparent. This, Marcus thought, was new. He’d never heard her address their boss this way before.

“I’m actually here for Marcus,” Thelonious told her, still staring at her, and Marcus frowned.

“You couldn’t have met with me during the day, Thelonious?” he asked. This wasn’t the way these things usually happened. He’d had one-on-one meetings with Thelonious before, of course. Curriculums needed to be modified, decisions made. But at this point in the year, they were past all that. Had one of the parents of the kids in his classes complained about their workload? He tried to keep things reasonable, he really did, but they needed to be prepared for the test. There was no way they’d pass without doing any homework…

“I was in meetings all day,” he said, his tone unreadable. For the first time he tore his gaze from Abby to look his way, and Marcus almost wished he hadn’t.

“It’s getting late,” Abby said, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes to fix Thelonious with a piercing stare. “Why don’t you talk to him tomorrow?”

“The traffic does tend to get bad around this time,” Marcus noted, taking Abby’s lead. “If we could postpone, I’d really appreciate it.”

“This isn’t something that can wait until tomorrow,” Thelonious said, his expression solemn. “If it were, I would talk to him then.”

 Marcus felt his blood pressure skyrocketing. What couldn’t wait until tomorrow? What could he possibly have done that Thelonious Jaha, the only man in the walls of Arkadia who had the authority to fire him, needed to meet with him urgently?

They looked at each other without a single word, brown gaze meeting brown. Abby knew something was wrong. So did he. But there was no way out, no way to work around the obstacle Thelonious Jaha’s presence had placed before them. It really might be nothing, he told himself. It really might be. Best not to jump to a conclusion and end up falling on his face.

So why did he have a sinking feeling in his stomach? Why had his mouth gone dry?

It was clear that Abby wanted to talk to him alone before he spoke to Thelonious, and he wondered if she knew something he didn’t. If there were more pieces to the puzzle of Jaha’s presence than he had on the metaphorical table in front of him.

“It won’t take longer than ten minutes,” Thelonious added, as if that would somehow diffuse the tension crackling in the room like a firestorm. “I don’t think the traffic will be too horrible by then.”

Abby looked at Marcus.

Marcus looked at Abby.

There was nothing they could say, not in front of their uninvited guest. Marcus didn’t know where this feeling of dread had sprung from, but he wished he could shove it back, push it down, make it stop. If Abby’s tight posture and blank expression were any indication, she felt the same. He wouldn’t call it fear – Abby Griffin didn’t scare easily – but he would call it trepidation. Anxiety. Stress. She was most certainly wondering why this meeting didn’t involve her, and whether or not it had anything to do with a certain snowstorm that had locked them in the building together.

Marcus doubted it. Abby would blame herself, even in her attempts to be logical. Yes, Thelonious showing up at the restaurant was a bit odd, but they’d likely just been at the same place at the same time. It didn’t mean they were being tracked, for God’s sake. And all evidence pointed to the contrary that this was involving their night in Arkadia – if it were, he thought Thelonious would probably call them both into his office. It was Abby, after all, who’d broken into Jasper’s locker to steal that liquor.

While he remembered that fact, he’d never remind her of it. Not when she looked so stricken, so crestfallen.He was overwhelmed by the urge to comfort her, to tell her everything was going to be okay when he wasn’t quite sure that statement represented anything like the truth. But that was just another conglomeration of words that couldn’t fall on Thelonious Jaha’s ears. Just another thing he couldn’t say.

So instead, he kept his words to the hollow protocol that had been their reality for five months. Safe words. Meaningless words. But he tried to make the most of them, to press into the silences between them all the things protocol wouldn’t allow past his brain.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Abby,” he said, turning away from Thelonious to look directly at her. No matter how this went, he would see her.

“See you tomorrow, Marcus,” she responded, surprising him with the open display of affection in her gaze. She looked at him much as she had at the restaurant, as she had on the couch, as she had on the counter. Her feelings were bare for the world to see, even if their world had shrunk down to a visitor with a mysterious request and the empty halls and lengthening shadows of a high school on a wintry Monday night.

_I will see you, Abby. I promise._


	15. Of Consequences and Getting Caught

“Have a seat, Marcus,” Thelonious said, gesturing to a padded chair on the opposite side of his wooden desk. Marcus stole a glance at the clock as he sat – it was nearing 4:30, and the 5:00 rush hour was imminent. No matter what happened here, he’d have ample time to think about it in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a freeway more congested than the nose of an average high schooler in the middle of cold and flu season. _Wonderful._

“I know you’re eager to get home,” Thelonious said, as if he’d read his guest’s mind. He folded his hands together on his desk, leaned forward as he spoke. “This won’t take long.”

Marcus nodded, not trusting whatever words might or might not fall out of his mouth if he opened it. He heard his phone buzz on the inside of his bag, knew it must have been Abby texting him. She’d know he was still in the meeting – after all, he’d only left her a few minutes ago – but she was likely eager to know what was happening. If he was okay. What the hell Thelonious wanted with him.

He’d let her know as soon as he had that information. For now, there was nothing to tell her, nothing with which to respond to that mechanical buzzing.

He watched as Thelonious unfurled his hands, reached for a remote on the far right corner of his desk. Everything was meticulously organized, unlike the multitude of papers and gadgets that found homes all over Abby’s classroom, and he didn’t have to shuffle around papers or various gadgets to reach it.

“Do you have any idea why I called you here, Marcus?” Thelonious asked, and Marcus began feeling for all the world that this was less a meeting of two colleagues and more being called to the principal’s office. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d done something wrong, overstepped a boundary, made a mistake for which he needed to be reprimanded. And the fact that Thelonious was holding a remote, pointing it at the television mounted on the off-white wall across the room…he swallowed hard.

“No,” he answered, doing battle with a foreign urge to refer to the man he’d known for three years as “sir.” “I don’t understand, to be honest.”

Thelonious shook his head, glancing down at the remote as he talked. “A man like you…I’m shocked that this wasn’t consuming you with guilt. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t turn her in. After seeing you with her this weekend, though, I guess I understand.”

 _Turn her in?_ ‘Her’ could only be Abby. The remote and the T.V. and Thelonious’ wan smile were lines of code that didn’t form anything, pieces of a puzzle that just didn’t click. What was he supposed to be feeling guilty about? Then he thought about it a little harder, dug a little deeper, and the answer hit him like a punch in the face.

Friday night. The alcohol. The kissing. The damn-near sexual encounter. The thing he and Abby had selectively chosen to erase from their memories because it was easier that way, more convenient that way, safer that way. He hadn’t thought back to that night since he fixed her car, since they spent the day shopping together and ate spaghetti at her house. He hadn’t fixated on their drunken infatuation now that their feelings were revealed, solidified while sober. Unfortunately, just because they’d chosen to do away with that segment of their past didn’t mean it had been erased from the annals of history.

“Thelonious,” Marcus began, trying to plan his defense as the words came out. This seemed like a conversation to be having with Abby, not him. Considering the alcohol had been her idea, and if he’d seen the security footage he’d know that. Then again, Marcus was thankful Thelonious had decided to take action against him instead of her. The last thing she needed was more stress, more drama in her life after everything the past year had put her through. If Abby Griffin needed someone to take the fall for her mistake, Marcus Kane was her man. “I’m not sure what you’re-“

“Don’t play innocent with me, Marcus,” Thelonious said, his tone conversational rather than threatening. Where many men would’ve sounded angry, Thelonious Jaha only sounded bored, unattached, disinterested. He had the upper hand here, and he knew it. “But for your benefit, I’ll press play.”

Lost for words, Marcus could only nod. Thelonious made good on his offer and hit the play button, and the second the footage began to roll Marcus knew he and Abby’s lives wouldn’t be the same again.

He saw her striding down the hallway adjacent to their classrooms, yanking open a locker he now knew to be Jasper Jordan’s. Her ponytail swung like a pendulum as she looked up and down, scanning the shelves for a certain thing that she’d find after about five seconds of careful consideration. Her hands withdrew with a rather sizeable bottle of vodka, and when she turned around he was right where he knew he’d be.

“ _Abby,”_ he heard himself say, grabbing her wrist. _“What are you doing?”_

She gave a tiny huff of annoyance as she pulled away, her voice metallic and cold. How much could change in just a week and a half…how much, he thought, they now stood to lose. _“What does it look like I’m doing, Kane?”_

 _“Something I can’t let you do,”_ he said, and he remembered this, he remembered trying to stop her, to reason with her glinting glare and immobilizing, intoxicating attitude. Just her presence had struck him dumb. He was gone from the moment his fingers closed around her, from the second he’d opened his mouth.

But he should have tried harder. He should have forced that damn bottle from her hands and told the consequences – her hatred and fury – to be damned.

 _“You can’t control me,”_ she snapped, brushing past him. _If looks could kill,_ he remembered thinking. His blood had been as hot – boiling – then as it was cold now, turned to ice in his veins. Not for the first time, he realized he’d been a half a step away from falling in love with her then. He’d already had one foot over that line while the other was stuck on the opposite side, the side of hatred and snide remarks and deliberately trying to make life harder for her to keep that other shoe from falling.

He’d never been so happy to fail at something.

 _“You could lose your job!”_ he yelled, following her to her classroom and standing in the doorway. _“We could both lose our jobs, Abby! Think about what you’re doing!”_

He couldn’t see her face, but remembered word-for-word what came next. He remembered the fire that had ignited in her dark eyes, the way her pink lips parted, the way she stepped close enough to him to make him think she’d either kiss him or slap him and he wasn’t sure which was coming next.

As it turned out, neither.

“ _This, right here, is why I’m drinking,”_ she spat. _“So you can either join me, God forbid, or leave me the hell alone.”_

He saw his own shoulders stiffen as he leaned closer to her. _“I’m only staying to make sure you don’t have too much. I don’t think you realize the consequences-“_

She’d rolled her eyes then, turned around and retreated into her room. “ _Whatever you say,”_ he heard her say. _“But I bet you’d be more tolerable after a few drinks.”_

Marcus jumped as the moment shattered, as Thelonious fast-forwarded the tape to about a half-hour later. There was no sound, thankfully; just the image of them stumbling together down the hallway, clearly intoxicated, toward Miller’s classroom. Through the translucent haze of his drunkenness he thought he might have reached for her hand, saw his fingertips inch toward hers as they lurched and laughed about something he’d never be able to remember if he tried.

The only concrete memory he had of that moment was how startlingly beautiful she was, how she shone like a diamond even in the darkness of that storm. How her laugh sounded like music, like the chorus of his favorite song, her eyes as brown as the first good soil of springtime.

If she’d leaned in to kiss him then, he wouldn’t have pulled away. He would have kissed her back with every ounce of emotion he had, the feelings that exasperated door-slamming and barbed wire insults had trapped inside. But the alcohol had unlocked that cell, given the innermost workings of his heart an escape route. Even now, with the whole world falling apart around him, Marcus couldn’t say he was sorry for that.

With a sigh, Thelonious clicked a button and the screen went black. And just like that the protective aura of seeing her vaporized, leaving behind only the salty, burning sting of reality. Their boss knew about their escapade – maybe not all of it, maybe not the poem and the kissing and the intimacy they’d shared – but what he had was enough to get them fired. And not just that; if he released it to the press, went public with it, it might be enough to drive them apart for good. There was no way in hell Clarke’s peers would re-elect her as student body president if this came to light, not to mention any potential legal consequences they might encounter.

He swallowed hard, turned to his boss, and prepared to bargain for both his job and the woman he adored.

“Would you care to explain that, Marcus?” Thelonious asked after a long pause, his voice cold and smooth. “I have a feeling there’s more to it than meets the eye.”

“Thelonious,” he started, preparing to do something he’d only ever done once before in his life: grovel. “Principal Jaha. That footage…it represents a complete lack of judgment on my part. I should never have allowed Abby to-“

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Thelonious interjected. “You should have known better. As I said, I was _shocked_ by this. You’ve had no problem turning in peers for minor violations in the past, but when it came to Abby…not only did you not turn her in, but you joined her. Drank with her. And if the rumors I’ve been hearing are true, you and her did _much_ more than that.”

Not wanting to lie, Marcus kept his mouth closed. His brain kept drifting back to the same question, heard it repeating over and over again in his head like the chiming of a grandfather clock. How did he know? How did he know? How did he know?

And why now? Why, a week after it happened and most of the rumors had dissipated, did he find merit in returning to the old security tapes and pulling out the only footage that had the power to damn them? There had to be a way things connected here – Abby’s reaction to Thelonious, his uncovering of the footage, her hesitance to let him go to this meeting – had she somehow been involved in the revealing? Certainly she wouldn’t have leaked it, but could something have gotten out by accident? Could Lexa or Clarke have said something?

Those, he reasoned, weren’t the questions to be asking right now. Those weren’t questions to be asking while he stared down the barrel of a gun that might not only split them from their jobs, but break them up completely. The ‘why’ wasn’t important. The ‘how’ and ‘who’ weren’t important either.

But what were they going to do about it?

He swallowed hard, did his best to prepare a defense with the meager portion of his brain that hadn’t succumbed to nearly immobilizing panic. “I know what happened was wrong, sir. I should have stopped her, and I didn’t. For that I apologize. But don’t punish her. Please. Abby’s been through so much with Jake and Clarke and she only just started here. It wouldn’t be right to take this from her now.”

“When did I say anything about letting her go?” Thelonious said with raised eyebrows, as though the possibility were as foreign to him as the thought of relinquishing his power, and Marcus breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. Abby was safe. “She’s a valuable asset to this school, and although what she did was a breach of multiple rules Arkadia needs her. With what happened to her family a year ago, this lapse of our school code is _almost_ excusable. She’ll be disciplined, of course, but Mrs. Griffin is keeping her job.”

Marcus Kane wasn’t a religious man, but he could have knelt on the ground and wept. _Thank God._ Thank God his idiocy, his stupid, starstruck refusal to do the right thing wouldn’t cost her one of the ones she needed most. She couldn’t go back to working in Polis at the hospital, not after what had occurred there. Whatever happened to him was secondary.

“But it’s come to my attention that I can’t trust _you_ around her, Marcus,” Thelonious added, leaning forward against the paper calendar placed on the dark surface of his desk. “Where your colleagues would have done the right thing, you followed her lead. I can’t trust you to be objective where she’s concerned. To listen to your head instead of your heart. To have a will not weakened by sentiment.”

Were they still talking about the footage, he wondered, or had they slipped into something else altogether? Thelonious was looking at him with a combination of revulsion (which he understood, after what was on that tape) and, paradoxically, a pinch of envy. The longing spark that flickered behind his dark eyes, he way he’d clenched his jaw when Abby stepped close to him in the footage he’d shown…could Thelonious Jaha, Arkadia’s fearless leader, be jealous of him? For what?

His heart whispered an answer that his head ignored, played off as the wind howling outside.

But up was down and down was up in this rabbit hole of an office, and he half-expected the tiny hard candies sitting in a glass dish on the corner of his desk to make him grow smaller if he ate one. Nothing made sense, and he needed to find his way back to reality somehow.

Fortunately, Thelonious provided the kick to wake him from the nightmare – or rather, to propel him into a new one.

“Marcus,” he said softly, his tone a marvelous imitation of genuine sorrow. “I’m afraid Arkadia no longer requires your services.”

_Oh._

He took a deep, shuddering breath, tried to block out everything rushing into his head at once. Part of him screamed, shrieked, implored him to fight the decision his boss had made. But the more logical part of him – the part that hadn’t functioned on the day Abby broke into Jasper’s locker – knew such efforts would not bear fruit. Thelonious was a man of his word, and nothing Marcus tried in an attempt to preserve his employment would succeed.

Abby was safe. Abby still had a job. In the end, that was all that mattered.

That emotional, reckless part of him slowly calmed, collapsed into something fueled by nostalgia and sorrow. It sang a new tone, less vengeful: lamented the things he’d miss, the things he’d never get to do. He’d miss seeing the kids’ faces on Friday mornings, the hope sparkling in their eyes as they anticipated the weekend (and likely, he realized, the end of his class). He’d miss the sound of Bellamy and Clarke bickering, of Clarke’s annoyed sighing when he addressed her as “princess.” He’d miss waking Nate Miller up by spraying water in his face from his own water bottle. Hell, he’d even miss Jasper Jordan and all his assorted antics.

But one epiphany hit him like a bullet to the chest: he’d miss seeing her every day, looking across the hallway and knowing she was just on the other side. Leaving his door open so he could hear the smoky, rich sound of her voice. Bringing her coffee in the morning and eating lunch together. How could he have known he’d have to build a house of memories in just one week? Now that house was left incomplete, a pile of wooden rafters and tarps, and he’d have to cover himself with blankets and sleeping bags just to live in it.

But she was safe. She still had a job. That was all that mattered.

“I understand,” Marcus droned. Those four syllables seemed to drain him of all his energy and he slumped slightly in his chair, leaned against the armrests as though he were a puppet and they were his strings. But there was nothing else to say, really. He understood. It was logical. He hated it, he wished with everything inside him that he could reverse it, but he understood the logic behind Thelonious’ decision.

That didn’t mean part of him wasn’t still suspicious of his superior’s motives – the timing was still odd, his expressions were still a hair off – but this wasn’t a battle worth fighting. Not when the majority of it – anything relating to her – was already a victory. He didn’t want to push farther and lose it for them both.

“What will you do with the footage, sir?” Marcus asked after Thelonious explained the logistics behind his departure. Friday would be his last day. He’d have the rest of the week to get his things in order. He’d be paid a severance check.

“I haven’t decided,” he said, and Marcus’ heart stopped beating.

This was the only thing about the outcome that was unacceptable, impossible. He’d resigned himself to his fate earlier, given up on any hope for him. But this footage, for Abby’s sake, could never see the light of day.

“I worked here for six years,” Marcus said, and his boss nodded. It wasn’t a plea, a last resort - it was a statement of fact, an unalienable truth. “Can I ask you a favor, Thelonious? One last thing?”

He gave a single nod, fixed him with his empty stare.

“Don’t release it,” Marcus said slowly, staring his ex-employer in the eyes as he spoke. “For her sake. You say you won’t fire her, but giving that to the press…it would do the same thing. Not to mention how it would make Arkadia look, since she found the alcohol in Jasper Jordan’s locker.”          

A silence was born that seemed to span hours, matured into adulthood as his words rung in the air around them. It was a subtle form of defiance, what he’d just done – questioning his superior’s judgment – a move that he wouldn’t have dared to make prior to this meeting. But since this world was crumbling around him, he thought he might as well pull down a few more bricks while he was at it.

“I’ll consider it,” Thelonious said, dismissive and wholly unreadable. His expression was a code Marcus couldn’t crack, laced through with that mysterious jealousy he’d noticed before. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, Marcus.”

Taking his tone as a cue to leave, Marcus rose from his chair and found himself contemplating how everything could fall into place and fall to ruin in the timespan of a week.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said.

 

***

 

Getting fired, Marcus realized as he trudged through the gray slush in the parking lot and felt cool air nipping at his fingertips, wasn’t the hard part.

He had a favor to call in from an old friend, a woman who owed him a debt and could find him a place to work: that said, he knew he’d have to relocate to work for her. Staying in Polis wouldn’t be an option, unless he made up his mind to tolerate ten hours of drive time each and every day of the work week for the next twenty years. An inconvenience, to say the least.

But getting fired wasn’t the thing that wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed like a python made of pain. Getting fired wasn’t the reason his vision was blurry and his head hurt so badly it felt as though it had its own heartbeat.

Telling Abby would be the hard part.

As soon as he was seated in his car he opened his messages, read what she’d sent him at the beginning of the meeting.

**_What did Jaha want?_ **

His stomach clenched, and he bit his lip. There was no way he’d ignore her. She deserved better than that. But the second those words left his lips – “I got fired” – it would shatter whatever beautiful mirage they’d been living in, invite the depressing embrace of the outside world to hold them close again. This news was the equivalent of taking the pages of their happy ending, tearing it from the book, and setting it on fire.

But he couldn’t keep her in suspense. If he knew her even a quarter as well as he thought, she was worried about him. She wouldn’t show it – she’d make dinner (or, more likely, order takeout) for her and Clarke, get her lessons in order for tomorrow, carry on with her night as though everything were perfectly normal. But she’d glance at her phone now and then, heart racing, waiting for a text that hadn’t come. Marcus couldn’t do that to her.

So instead of ignoring her question, he answered it with one of his own.

**_Can I call you?_ **

Because this was a conversation best suited to words, to their voices and not the muted sound of fingertips on a phone screen. He would have preferred to tell her in person, but given the circumstances a phone call was the best he could offer. He hoped fervently, desperately that it would be enough.

She answered back only a minute later, and he realized as his heart shattered that she must have kept her phone nearby in case he responded.

**_Of course._ **

So he went back to the menu screen and dialed her number, nauseous under the weight of words unspoken. He stared out at the darkening winter world as the phone rang, watched squirrels scamper over snowbanks and birds soar through the skies. A beautiful place, he thought. Arkadia. A beautiful place with so damn much, hope, despair, and tragedy.

“Marcus?” Abby answered, and the inside of his car felt warmer from the moment he heard her voice. The tension laced through that single word made it apparent she was nervous – she knew that if it were nothing, just a casual meeting between employee and boss – that he wouldn’t have called. Perhaps some small part of her might already know. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m okay,” he decided to lead with that, to give her something good before the avalanche of bad that was about to collapse onto them. _And you’re okay. Thankfully._

“What did Jaha want?” she asked, repeating her text message verbatim.

He took a deep breath.

No going back now.

“I got fired,” Marcus said. “Friday is my last day.”

Marcus hated how the words tasted in his mouth. Bitter. Pungent. Revolting. _Fired._ He’d never been fired from a job before, had assumed he’d go the rest of his days in the working world without that black mark on his record. And yet here he was, sitting in his car in the dead of winter talking about how he’d been dismissed from the position he thought he’d spend the next twenty years holding.

_Fired._

The word seemed to fill his lungs with smoke, every breath burning his throat, his lips, the inside of his mouth. How ironic that the world outside could be below freezing, and yet Marcus Kane was on fire.

“Marcus, I-“ Abby paused, her sentence marred by a tiny intake of breath. “This was because of last week, wasn’t it? He found the security tapes.”

His hesitation was all the answer she needed.

“I should be the one getting fired,” she said flatly, devoid of emotion. “Not you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He couldn’t resist a brittle laugh, a laugh that hissed and snapped like a burning log. “I drank plenty that night, Abby. I’m not blameless. Jaha made that quite clear.”

“But I was the one who broke in to Jasper’s locker,” she said. “I taunted you into drinking with me. Why the hell would Jaha-“

Marcus rubbed his temples with the hand that wasn’t supporting his phone, refocused on the twilight dimming the white world outside. Part of him yearned to delve into the emotional – _I’ll miss you. I’ll miss working somewhere without you across the hallway. I’ll miss eating lunch with you and sneaking kisses behind closed doors. I don’t want to be five hours away from you, but I don’t see another way around it._

He opened his mouth, but those weren’t the words that came out.

“It doesn’t matter,” his lips and tongue and teeth formed instead, saving such sentiments for a time when they weren’t both so volatile. “I have a friend who owes me a favor, and she’ll help me get back on my feet.”

He could hear her fuming, her enraged scowl forming vividly in his mind’s eye. The same scowl she’d once used on him, now being used in his favor.

“No!” she exclaimed. “I’m going to talk to Jaha as soon as he gets here tomorrow. This isn’t right. You don’t deserve this. Marcus, it should be me. We both know it.”

His head and heart pounded in unison, formed a symphony of stress with the blood rushing through his veins and the sweat trickling down his forehead. “Please, Abby,” he said, surprising himself by how frail his voice sounded. Like another word from her would shatter him, destroy him. “Just don’t. Don’t do this.”

His words sounded like those of a starving man, a man who hadn’t eaten in days. And soon he would be starving: starving for her, yearning for her presence like a child yearned for nourishment. Without Abby Griffin, his soul would wither and collapse. But what choice did they have?

“I won’t let this happen to you,” she said. “I can erase the tape, find a way to go back and delete the footage. Raven’s here for another day or two, I know she’d be willing to help.”

Lips quirked in a tiny, wan smile, Marcus couldn’t stop himself from shaking his head. Only Abby Griffin would risk her career for him instead of taking Jaha’s pardon as a blessing. But as beautiful as her sentiment was, it was null and void. He wouldn’t let her suffer his fate.

“If you got caught-“ he started, but she interrupted as soon as he spoke.

“I won’t get caught.”

“ _Abby_ ,” he sighed in unison with the howling of the winter wind. “If you did, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Please. You can’t.”

The quiet was filled only by the gentle buzzing of a fuzzy cell connection and the incessant whispering of the wind against the side of his car. Even the birds, it seemed, had fallen silent.

“Marcus,” she said firmly, her voice a beam of steel. She spoke to him the same way she lectured Jasper and Monty, slowing down the rate of her speaking so every word carried a particular undeniable emphasis. “If I want to walk out of Arkadia right after you on Friday, there isn’t a damn thing you can do to stop me.”

No, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop her. If that was truly what she wanted, truly where her heart lay. And for a fraction of a second his own fluttered, skipped a beat to think of how she must feel for him. The deep feelings that could drive a woman like her to walk away from a job he knew she loved – despite its shortcomings, the way she moved like a sleep-deprived hurricane through the halls on a Monday morning – just to be with him. To protest a decision she felt was unfair. To show that she was by his side as resolutely now as she had been in that security footage.

And for a moment he allowed himself that vision. For a moment he allowed himself to be selfish, to conjure up grandiose images of them striding down the hallway hand in hand toward whatever nebulous future awaited among the swirling snowflakes. He allowed himself to feel the press of her lips on his cheek as they left the building for good, that sweet pressure erasing the bitterness of goodbyes left unsaid.

Then the fire flared again and consumed that vision, turning it to ash.

Jaha would never let her leave. That mysterious cocktail of emotion he’d seen in his superior’s eyes would prevent him from allowing her to hand in her notice, bar him from respecting her wishes under the guise that Arkadia needed her service enough to risk a scandal. Then again, who knew? Once he was gone, would Jaha erase the tapes himself, just to keep her around?

“No,” Marcus said, resigned. “I can’t stop you, if that’s what you really want. But I can beg you, and that’s what I’m doing. Abby, please. Don’t do this.”

He heard a noise that sounded like a rush of static, realized when it repeated that it was a sniffle. She was crying. Abby Griffin was crying, and it was his fault.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and he wished more than anything, more than even the impossibility of getting his job back, that she were there beside him instead of miles away. Because distance was the cruelest punishment of all, distance laughed at his love for her and stretched it across expanses of time and space in every attempt to make it wear thin. Distance made it impossible for him to pull her into his arms and press his lips to her hair and tell her, over and over and over again, that this wasn’t her fault. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Marcus murmured, his own voice trembling. Hearing her cry churned a pot of foreign emotions within him, and he could barely keep them from overflowing as he bit the inside of his cheek to keep them in check. _Crying doesn’t solve anything,_ he reminded himself, recalling a time when his own father had used those words on him. _What are you going to do about it?_

It seemed there was only one thing he could do: make the most of the time they had left together, and evaluate whether or not six hours – five from Polis to Mount Weather and an additional hour to reach Arkadia – would declare distance the winner in the battle for their relationship.

“I’ll be okay,” he added, doing everything in his power to reassure her. “I’m going to call my friend tonight. She’s been trying to get me to work for her for years, Abby. She’ll be excited to hear from me.”

She was quiet. He was quiet.

“Who’s going to slam my door when my kids get too loud?” she asked, although she knew damn well he hadn’t done any of those things since that fateful Friday night. “Reprimand me for being late?”

Marcus leaned back against the warm leather headrest, suddenly feeling as though the car had ignited with the incendiary news. Jaha’s actions were the match, Abby was the rock, and he was aflame with regret and guilt and shame.

And even as he consoled her, the sky dark outside his window, he realized he wouldn’t have taken back any of it. Not a single second. Because every moment he was able to spend with her – good, bad, or ugly – was a moment well spent, well-loved, well-lived.

But every turn of the wheels as he drove home was a palpable ache in his chest, and he realized when he opened the door to his apartment that he’d left his heart at Arkadia.


	16. Of Last Days and Apologies

Marcus made the mistake of looking across the hall, and as a consequence he felt the shattering pain of his heart snapping in half.

Abby blamed herself for what had happened. She wouldn’t tell him so – she didn’t want to make him feel any worse – but to Marcus, it was obvious. It was written in the way she looked at him, the weighty resonance of her relatively few words, the dark circles under her eyes that evidenced she’d been having some sleepless nights. He thought he’d managed to convince her not to go through with her plan to destroy the footage or confront Jaha; at least, he hoped he had. Truthfully, it was often hard to tell whether her agony stemmed from losing him or not being able to do anything about it. Probably both, he thought.

And that made his chest ache most of all – not that he’d be leaving Arkadia, but that he’d be leaving her. By packing all his things in a box and following Jaha’s orders, he’d be saying goodbye. They had yet to discuss how things would work with long-distance; she knew he’d be leaving Polis, but he hadn’t found the courage to tell her just how far away he’d be.

Everything he did now, it seemed, just added to her pain.

If anything good had come from their knowledge of what was to come, it was that they could be slightly more public about their feelings. The next four days passed in a plethora of stolen kisses between class periods, Abby leaning her head on his shoulder as they ate lunch (or rather, sat in his room during the lunch period with full lunchboxes and waited for the end of hour).

After one particularly sobering lunch period – Tuesday, he thought it was, but the days of this week had a tendency to blur together – she’d said her usual goodbye, given him a slow, sweet kiss and wandered back toward reality. It took him until halfway through his Classic Literature course to realize she’d left a pile of quizzes on his desk labeled “sixth period” and there was no way she wasn’t looking for them right now with that adorable confused frown of hers, so he told his students to get started on their essay prompt and strode over to her side of the hallway. Her door was open, and he invited himself in.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Griffin?” he said awkwardly, wondering how her room was always at least ten degrees warmer than his. Cheeks flushed with the stumbling propriety of calling her “Mrs. Griffin” instead of Abby, he held the quizzes out to her as she paused her lesson and glanced his way. “You left these…on the copier.”

He could have said she left them in his room. They weren’t exactly hiding anymore – Jaha had, albeit unintentionally, given them permission to take their relationship out of the shadows. But he wasn’t sure if she was comfortable with the insinuation in front of the kids; kids, after all, were vastly different than adults. Their colleagues knowing about their relationship was one thing. A horde of 16-year-olds was another. And given the strain his firing had already placed on things, he wasn’t about to stray onto any shaky limbs.

“No, I didn’t,” she said firmly, and before he really knew what the hell was going on she’d closed the distance between them, slid her hands into his hair and pressed a soft, warm kiss to his cheek that sent an electric thrill through his veins and only made the affected area grow all the redder. A gasp rang out from the rest of the room, and Marcus remembered they weren’t alone. This wasn’t after school, or lunch, or between classes as they fumbled to show their affection in less than six minutes.

She knew they were standing in front of thirty teenagers right now, didn’t she? Thirty teenagers who, from the looks of it when he opened his eyes and took a quick glance around, had all pulled out their phones to capture the moment. They’d be all over social media tonight, that much he knew. And this had been no causal kiss, no mere gesture of thanks: this was clearly, undeniably romantic. She’d left no question as to where they stood with each other, igniting a million of his own. For example, what the hell was she thinking?

When he finally relinquished the moment and opened his eyes, took a few seconds to tune out the noise of the world and focus entirely on her, he noted she appeared determined, defiant. There was nothing in her brown eyes that suggested hesitation or apprehension: she knew what she was doing, what she needed to do, and she’d done it. It occurred to him that perhaps this was what she’d wanted all along. Perhaps she’d planted those quizzes in his room, knowing he’d come back to give them to her. No surprise there, he thought.

The question was, why? What about this particular class was special enough for her to kiss him in their presence?

He would have asked her if every word in his vocabulary hadn’t suddenly evacuated his head. Something in her lips functioned as a special kind of poison, a beautiful toxin, and after Jaha’s news it left him as drained as it did whole. She was so beautiful, so breathtaking in her determination and bravery, and all he was doing was breaking her.

“Thank you for bringing them back,” was all she offered in the way of a whispered explanation, giving his cheek a gentle stroke with her thumb as she turned away. She walked back to her desk as if she hadn’t just tilted what remained of his world off its axis, as if she hadn’t made him dizzy by pressing her mouth against his skin, as if this were just another Thursday afternoon.

She was a riddle, his Abigail Griffin.

“Hell yeah, Mrs. Griffin!” a girl with blonde hair – was her name Harper? - shouted from her spot in the back of the classroom, starting a chain of applause that soon included the room’s entire population. “About time you guys made it official.”

“Heart eyes, motherfucker!” another girl shouted, drawing legions of laughter from the rest of her peers. Other comments were made in rapid succession, each louder than its predecessor.

“I knew it!”

“Awwwwwwww, you guys are so cute. Relationship goals. Eleven out of ten.”

“You missed his mouth, Griffin! I’m docking you points!”

Apparently he and Abby had been the subject of much discussion around Arkadia. Or at least, he felt he could safely assume. Marcus stole a quick glance in her direction and Abby gave him the tiniest of shrugs, as if to say, “ _who would’ve thought_?”

He took one last look around the room, absorbing the joy and cheerfulness ringing in the atmosphere. In his wildest dreams, he hadn’t thought the kids would care about he and Abby. In his mind they had their own relationships and concerns: why would they emotionally invest themselves in a romance between two middle-aged teachers? The most he thought they minded about their existence was when they handed back exams. Then his students cared for him – or hated him, depending on their grade.

This didn’t fall into those carefully-wrought guidelines. It tore down the tower of assumptions he’d built over years and years of teaching, collapsed it to the ground in a dusty pile of brick. These kids – at least some of them, he wasn’t going to generalize – wanted them to be happy. It made them happy to see he and Abby happy.

He swallowed hard and blinked, fighting a sudden burning sensation in his eyes. When he opened them, he noticed one person who wasn’t smiling. Someone who wasn’t laughing. Someone who, Marcus guessed, hadn’t been amused in the slightest with their revelation.

Thelonious Jaha sat, straight-faced and rigid, at one of Abby’s lab tables with a binder and a fountain pen. And as he scribbled away on something – more than likely her evaluation – he paused for a moment to make eye contact with the man he was firing.

Marcus stared back for a moment, a pit in his stomach, the magic evaporated. Then with one last look at Abby, he turned away and walked back to his little crumbling corner of the world.

* * *

“Hey, Mr. Kane? Sir?”

Marcus paused placing his well-worn copy of Great Expectations into a sizeable cardboard box at the sound of a voice behind him, emanating from his doorway. Friday had arrived both too soon and not soon enough, as he’d both dreaded and anticipated the fateful day. There was no way for him to outrun the clutches of time, no way to turn back its hands and prevent the inevitable. With that in mind, part of him fell prey to the urge to to just _get on with it_.

And part of him, a large, dominant part, ached like hell when he turned around and saw Bellamy Blake standing in his doorway.

“Bellamy?” Marcus said, astounded at the boy’s presence. He wasn’t the type to stay after class and ask questions, and he shouldn’t be – he had a knack for government, an almost intuitive grasp on the way the system worked. For all his teasing Clarke and making her life a living hell, the boy was a born leader. He just had to work on that arrogant streak of his. And recently, since the class found out about his departure, he’d toned down his antics considerably.

“I just wanted to thank you for everything,” Bellamy said, his posture awkwardly frozen, his back stiff. It occurred to Marcus that he likely had no clue how to address him in a one-on-one setting, given that they’d never spoken like this before. “This is my favorite class, and whoever teaches it next…they won’t compare to you.”

Marcus smiled, fought that same burning ache he’d felt when Abby kissed him. “That’s very kind of you, Bellamy. Thank you.”

The boy nodded, and Marcus expected their conversation was at its end. The Blakes, at least from what he knew of them, weren’t much for long heartfelt talks. But just the fact that Bellamy had thought to come see him on his last day, to share such kind words – that was more appreciation than Marcus had had in quite some time. There was a difference between genuineness and “kissing up,” being kind in an attempt to make a grade. But Thelonious Jaha had effectively eliminated that possibility from the equation. Bellamy Blake was here because he wanted to be, not because his grade required it.

Marcus Kane wasn’t quite sure how to handle the situation either, especially when the boy didn’t leave after saying what he thought was the entirety of his piece. Instead Bellamy walked into the room and leaned back against one of the desks, practically sitting on the scratched wooden surface. He thought it best to go back to packing his things, to wait until he said whatever else he was here to say. No point in trying to prompt him when just about anything could come out of his mouth.

“Octavia told me about you and Mrs. Griffin,” he said, and Marcus froze. His reflex had always been to deny anything between he and Abby, and yet after yesterday that wouldn’t be a viable response. Abby had a point, he guessed – it really didn’t matter what they did now or who saw them, excluding another drunken romp through the halls. The fact that Jaha was there was another matter entirely, but he hadn’t found the courage to discuss it with her yet. Soon, he would. Things with his ex-boss had become too strange to play off as coincidence, and he thought Abby might know more than she was letting on. Of course she had her reasons, and he did everything in his power to respect that.

But he’d been _fired_ , for God’s sake. The least she could do was explain if she knew anything about why that had happened, anything below the “we-got-drunk-together-on-school-property” surface.

“Oh?” was all he said to his visitor, betraying none of the conflicting emotions roiling in his chest.

“Yeah,” Bellamy said, as if this should have been rather self-explanatory. “She’s really upset about what’s happening with you. She doesn’t think it’s fair.”

Marcus frowned. Certainly his sister didn’t know what had happened that night…did she? Would he have to resort to bribing teenagers to keep their mouths shut about the one night of drunken idiocy that led to two weeks of harmonious bliss?

“What does she think happened?” Marcus asked.

Bellamy shrugged. “She hasn’t told me. ‘Need-to-know’ information, or something like that. They’ve all been really secretive about the whole thing.”

_‘They’ve all’? Who the hell are…_

“Bellamy,” Marcus asked, fighting a weary sigh that threatened to burst forth. If they were still spreading those rumors, Abby could be affected even after he was gone. “Who has Octavia talked to about this?”

“Just a few of her friends,” he said. “They’re not gonna do anything about it. From what I could tell, they were just trying to push you guys together. Seems to me like it worked.”

Marcus couldn’t stop himself: he laughed. The whole situation was just so incredibly ludicrous, and he expected himself to wake up any moment now. For his eyes to snap open with their typical view of his white ceiling, for him to realize he’d never been in love with Abby Griffin because they’d never so much as kissed, for him to slide out of bed and get dressed and go off to school like any other morning. But try as he might, wakefulness wouldn’t find him.

“What’s funny?” Bellamy asked in his gravelly tone, genuinely curious.

“When did they start doing…whatever it is they were doing?” Marcus responded, a question for a question.

“I don’t know,” Bellamy said. “A week ago? I don’t think it was any earlier than that.”

Marcus laughed again, elaborated on the humor without questioning. “Abby and I were together before whatever it is they did, then,” he said. Then, after a moment’s consideration, “Probably best not to tell her that, though.”

It was Bellamy’s turn to laugh, a sharp exhale as his chin dropped briefly to his chest. “I agree.”

They regarded each other for a long moment, brown eyes meeting brown eyes.

“She really cares about you guys,” Bellamy said, suddenly sober. “I don’t have a solid answer as to why, but I think she noticed how unhappy Mrs. Griffin was after everything with her husband. Even though she’s only been here since the beginning of the year, O hates it when people she respects are in pain.”

 _Respects._ So Octavia Blake, notorious for her rebellion against any kind of authority, respected Abby Griffin. Marcus stored that intriguing information away to give to Abby at a later date. Given the shenanigans in which she and her friends engaged, he thought Abby might be honored to know the truth.

“Somehow she put it together that you made her happy,” Bellamy continued. “So she did everything she could to make it happen. And now that you’re leaving, she feels like it was for nothing, that it could all go away. She’s angry as hell at Principal Jaha.”

Octavia, he thought, wasn’t the only one angry as hell at Jaha. If looks could kill, Abby would’ve gotten him with a dagger four days ago…and every day since, most likely.

But behind that rage was a touching generosity, the same brand of kindness that drove Bellamy to his classroom to tell Marcus he was appreciated. Octavia and Bellamy Blake cared about the future of his relationship with Abby, for whatever mysterious reason.

“I’m honored that she cares,” Marcus said, taken aback.

“You should be,” Bellamy answered. “She doesn’t feel that for everyone.”

They were both quiet for a moment, and Marcus began packing again.

“What will you do?” Bellamy asked as Marcus shoved a few more of his own books into the box. He sure as hell wouldn’t be letting the school keep anything of his – he wasn’t a charity, and if he were he certainly wouldn’t be donating to the likes of Jaha. “Are you going to try to fight it?”

First Abby, now Bellamy. Why did everyone want him to fight? Why wouldn’t they just let him leave Arkadia in peace?

“I have another job lined up,” Marcus said. “A friend at Trikru University owes me a favor, and she can get me a position as a professor in the English department there.”

Bellamy nodded. “I bet that pays better than being here.”

“It does,” Marcus said flatly. “It certainly does.”

Twenty years ago, before he left the world of business for the halls of Arkadia, he wouldn’t have imagined himself caring little for the numbers on his paycheck. But his life was measured in different numbers now – the number of hours he was able to spend with Abby – and no paycheck could bring the happiness her presence gave him. And now that he’d be moving five hours away, hours from her radiant smile, her soft touch, the sound of her voice…he could hardly even think about it.

“You don’t sound too excited about it, sir,” Bellamy noted, and Marcus couldn’t bring himself to meet his penetrating gaze. Why were the Blakes so damn good at reading him? Could they do this with Abby, too, or was it a talent reserved only for him?

“I’m not,” he admitted. Part of him wasn’t quite sure why he was choosing to bare his soul to a 17-year-old boy who had only been in his AP Gov and Classic Literature classes for five months, but he was tired and weary and Abby hadn’t yet come to see him and dammit, he _just didn’t care anymore_. “I didn’t want to leave this place. Jaha didn’t give me a choice.”

“I figured,” Bellamy said. “As tough as you were on us, I could tell you cared enough to stay. You just wanted us to do our best. Whoever’s coming next…they won’t live up to you.”

Marcus looked up from the poetry anthology he’d been doing his best to cram in between copies of various Bronte novels, regarding the boy with dark hair and dark eyes as he stared back. Words came, flimsy and loosely-knit.

“Thank you, Bellamy,” he said, wondering how much more he’d end up thanking the boy for when all was said and done. On a whim he reached into the box and pulled out an old copy of one of their required texts, one for which he remembered Bellamy had shown a particular excitement.

It was his own copy of The Iliad – accented with gold helmets and swords with a cover colored deep turquoise, it was a collector’s item and had cost him a pretty penny to say the least. But looking at it under the fluorescent lights of his old classroom, white walls and wooden shelves laid bare under the rule of Thelonious Jaha, he realized it would be better loved in different hands. Hands that wouldn’t associate it with bitter memories.

“Here,” Marcus said, holding the book to him with arms outstretched. “You should have this.”

Bellamy’s eyes widened, his jaw dropping a fraction. “Mr. Kane,” he said, unmoving from his spot by the desk. “You don’t have to-“

“I insist,” Marcus said, continuing to hold the book away from his body. “Think of it as a reward for setting the curve on my final.”

Bellamy smiled, the freckles on his cheeks stretching as his lips quirked upward. “Thank you, sir,” he said, eyes shining with delight.

“Of course,” Marcus said, trying not to get emotional as he moved the last of his books from the bare shelves and into the boxes. Even before Abby, he’d spent years of his life here. He’d spent years teaching students about their government and the works of literature that had influenced nearly every aspect of their lives, and he almost hadn’t realized how much they had influenced every aspect of his. Until now, his sorrows had been mainly centered around Abby; how lonely he’d feel without her on the opposite side of his hallway, how much he’d miss spending days and nights with her, how lost he’d feel without her guiding presence. She’d become a compass of sorts to him, a North Star, and it was almost impossible to believe a single sentence from Jaha could snuff out that light.

But there was another component to his grief, one to which he hadn’t given much thought until Bellamy Blake wandered into his room on his last day to tell him he would be missed. And it was then the ache in his chest expanded tenfold, opening and blossoming into a different kind of pain. Because he wouldn’t just miss Abby. He’d miss them, too.

He’d miss the bickering, the missed assignments and chaos of lesson plans and quizzes and tests. Not that those things wouldn’t be present at the college level, but…it wouldn’t be the same. There wouldn’t be that same teacher-student connection, the one that allowed Bellamy to be here right now. Arkadia’s students had taken a branding iron to his heart and labeled it as theirs, and no matter where he went they would always be with him.

She would always be with him.

And as they shared one last handshake, a promise to keep in touch, and an awkwardly formal goodbye after Bellamy’s phone buzzed, they didn’t notice Abby Griffin’s closed door across the hallway. They couldn’t see the tears dripping from behind her closed eyelids after she read the message she’d been terrified she’d receive, the message she had known was coming but desperate, desolate, she’d allowed herself to slip into denial.

Raven was good, but she wasn’t _that_ good. Not on this short of notice and with no time for preparation.

**_Sorry, Abby. It’s password-protected or something. I can’t get the program unlocked to delete anything before Kane leaves._ **

Biting her lower lip to keep from all-out sobbing, she accepted that her plan B – deleting the footage – wasn’t going to work worth a damn.

Another text came through, and her heart leapt for a moment – had Raven figured it out?

No. No, she hadn’t.

 ** _I’m really, really sorry,_** was all the message read, and Abby felt like throwing her phone across the room in an uncharacteristic fit of rage.

There was no Plan C.

Plan A had been getting herself fired too, an act of revenge against the man who she knew was taking his jealously out on Marcus. She hadn’t thought it would be too difficult, considering she’d only been there for five months and out of the teachers in Arkadia she had the least amount of seniority. But she’d been wrong.

Kissing Marcus in front of him hadn’t done a damn thing. He’d just told her after class that public displays of affection were unacceptable, and that in the future he’d have to take disciplinary action against her. She responded by saying what happened on Friday was her fault, and he had yet to take any ‘disciplinary action’ against her on that.

He didn’t respond.

No meetings had been called, no hearings held. For all intents and purposes, her job was safe. Instead of relief, she felt annoyance. Annoyance, and that ever-present guilt that skyrocketed when she was in Marcus Kane’s presence. She said she wouldn’t let this happen to him, and she’d meant every word. So she moved on to Plan B: getting that pesky footage wiped from the face of the Earth.

Raven had volunteered to help once she heard about what happened, and getting her into the school under the guise of coming back to visit her old teachers had been mere child’s play. She’d snuck into the custodial offices and hacked into their mainframe, but, according to her last text, hadn’t been able to get past their Home screen. Jaha, it seemed, had done something to password-protect the program. She’d told Raven what she thought the words might be – “Wells” or “Abby” or “Arkadia” or even his wife’s name, “Ariadne,” but nothing had worked.

Abby rested her head in her hands, nursing a throbbing headache, working up the will to respond to the most disheartening text message since Marcus’ ominous **_can I call you?_**

She hoped Raven had let Bellamy know he could leave. He had also volunteered to help, albeit unexpectedly: Octavia hadn’t come forward. According to her brother, she was too angry to be trusted with something like this. Her emotions, he said, could sabotage the entire operation. He, on the other hand, cared enough to keep a level head. So she allowed him to serve as a distraction, an insurance policy that kept Marcus from entering her room while Raven deleted the footage and replaced it with a loop of a clear hallway from the day before.

Then Clarke, her third volunteer, was supposed to sneak into Jaha’s office with Lexa’s assistance and take his copied footage. Or at least, that was how it was supposed to happen.

It hadn’t happened that way.

“Shit!” she shrieked in a deafening whisper, teardrops leaking from between her trembling fingers. This had been it. Her last hope, the thing on which all her boundless optimism had hitched a ride and crashed. Hope was everything, except for when it didn’t do a damn thing to help him. To help them. To keep them together, across the hallway from each other in their high school Garden of Eden. Instead they’d fallen from paradise, cast out under Thelonious Jaha’s godlike wrath because she’d committed the sin of falling for someone other than him.

But that wasn’t the only sin she’d committed, she thought. If she hadn’t pulled that alcohol from Jasper’s locker, Jaha wouldn’t have had ammunition to use against Marcus. He wouldn’t have had an excuse to fire him – at least, nothing that would have held up if he chose to push the matter. At the core of the matter, her indiscretion had cost him his job. A job she knew he loved. A job over which they’d bonded. And to Marcus Kane, she knew it wasn’t just a job, a way to pass the work week and survive until the weekend. Unlike her, he hadn’t taken the position because he couldn’t bear returning to his old one. To him, this wasn’t just a livelihood: it was a life.

And her idiocy had robbed him of that, and now they were both locked out of Heaven.

“Mom?” she heard a voice whisper, and pulled herself together faster than if she were fabric being stitched by a sewing machine. She couldn’t let Clarke see her like this.

She had words, or she thought she did. But they vaporized when she opened her mouth, dissipated before they could materialize, lost in the depths of her despair. It took a few moments for her to register her daughter’s embrace, the pair of arms holding her tightly as she fought with every ounce of courage she had to hold back the waterfall threatening to pour forth from her eyes.

Clarke didn’t tell her it was okay, because she knew it wasn’t. And Abby didn’t tell her daughter it was okay, because she knew it wasn’t. Nothing about their situation was okay, nothing about their situation was tolerable, so instead of offering empty promises they simply held each other and adjusted to the dark reality into which they’d fallen.

“Go to him,” Clarke said once her mother’s tears had dried, her shoulders stilled. “I’m okay.”

Abby leaned away, saw the determination in her daughter’s eyes.

“What about Bellamy and Lexa?” she asked. Someone needed to let them know what had happened, how spectacularly her plan had failed.

“Lexa already knows,” Clarke said, solemn. “And I can handle Bellamy.”

She lingered for a few moments, wondering through the fog of sadness when her beautiful little girl had turned into a beautiful young woman.

“Thank you, Clarke,” she said softly, her voice trembling.

And she left the room as Bellamy entered, one journey ending and another beginning.

* * *

 

The walls were bare, nothing but a conglomeration of off-white paint and large bricks.

The shelves were bare, nothing but reddish wood and dust.

His desk was bare, nothing but a shiny expanse of black plastic countertop.

Her heart was lay bare, nothing but an aching mess of regret and adoration for the man who stood in the center of it all.

Marcus was taping the last of his cardboard boxes closed, his back to her. It took her a few tries, but after what could only have been ten seconds and felt like a lifetime she managed to speak.

“Marcus?” she croaked, fully aware of how flimsy and pathetic her voice sounded. He was the one getting fired, and she was the one emotionally compromised by it.

He dropped the tape dispenser instantly at the uttering of that single word, his name, turned to face her with a mixture of hope and desolation that brought those infuriating tears back again.

“Come here,” he said softly, and in less than six strides she was in his arms.

The last time he’d said those words, they’d been so blissfully happy. They’d made a home in the clouds and refused to look down, to see how far they could fall, to make note of the storm approaching. They’d lived in a misty white dream world that had turned gray without either of them noticing, and now they were hurtling back toward the Earth at a rate neither of them could comprehend. But the warmth of his strong arms around her slowed their descent, made her believe if just for a moment that they were still floating above it all.

There was no way to tell how long they stayed there, cemented in each other’s embrace as solidly as the characters in the posters of Greek art he’d used to have on the walls in his room. She breathed him in, that familiar woodsy scent she’d grown to know so well, and focused on allowing only the smallest of tears to travel down her cheeks. But she must have failed – god damn it, she was really failing at everything today – because Marcus leaned away.

For a moment she was genuinely confused – what did it matter to him if she started crying? He was the one losing his job, after all – but once his hand slid to the side of her face, gentle and tender, she knew exactly what he was doing.

He was wiping away her tears.

His thumb moved across her soft skin with a feather-light caress and she leaned into him, disbelieving that there would be a time when he wasn’t just fifty feet away. There would be a time – two days from now, in fact – when she couldn’t just walk across a hallway and into his arms. There would be a time when the closest he’d be to her was a phone call and that beautiful burgundy t-shirt that she wore to bed every night. He’d be close when that thick cotton swept against her skin, when she lay beneath her fluffy sheets and warm comforter and breathed in the scent of him.

He’d be close, so damningly close, and a thousand worlds away.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and it was all she could do not to give a gloomy laugh. Of course he would be the one losing his job and finding a way to apologize to her for it. Typical.

“You have _nothing_ to be sorry for,” she said, reaching up to move her hand overtop of his so they both rested on the side of her face, both catching tiny droplets of her tears. “I should be the one apologizing.”

He shook his head. “Abby, you don’t need to apologize to me.”

Now she did laugh, a quiet little broken thing, not even distantly related to the ones she’d given less than a week ago on their date. He didn’t understand. No matter how many times she tried to express it, he’d never understand. Damn him and his forgiving ways. “Marcus, this is my fault. You know that. I know that. So stop telling me I shouldn’t be sorry.”

_And if you’d thought of a better plan, he’d still be here. But nothing worked and now he’s leaving and it’s your damn fault._

“We both could have done things differently,” he admitted, leaning forward to press a lingering kiss to her forehead, a contact that radiated warmth the length of her body and poured gasoline on the fiery guilt in her stomach. “Let’s leave it at that, all right?”

He wasn’t wrong –they both could have done things differently. But in the end, it might not have mattered. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Because Thelonious Jaha was a man used to getting what he wanted, and even if he hadn’t had that footage he would have found a way to make Marcus Kane’s life nearly unbearable. How, she wondered, could a man like him be in charge of a place like this?

Heartsick, she gave him a single nod before closing her eyes and drawing him close again. Resting her head against his chest and finding the rhythmic beating of his heart, she closed her eyes and willed the rest of the world to slip away. In this moment it was just her and Marcus, two teachers shielding each other against every obstacle in their path, two teachers falling, falling, falling, falling in love and out of grace.

But in spite of that, she’d built her own Heaven in his arms.

His fingers moved up and down her spine, radiating warmth even through the thick material of her sweater. And she fit like a key in a lock with her head beneath his chin, molded to him as if they’d become one autonomous thing instead of two separate entities. Hearts beating as one, thinking as one, breathing as one, feeling as one, loving as one.

The rumbling of his voice through his chest startled her at first, and it took her a few moments to comprehend what he was saying. Although to some extent, she didn’t think he knew exactly what he wanted to say, either.

“Abby, I-“ he started, paused, took a deep breath that sounded like the howling of the winter breeze outside her bedroom window. “If you’re not busy tonight, I think we should talk about…”

“Right,” she said, knowing exactly where his sentence was going. _We should talk about what’s coming next. We should talk about what we’re going to do when we’re not seeing each other every day. We should talk about how to have a relationship like normal, middle-aged adults who don’t work at the same place and eat lunch with each other every day and steal kisses behind closed doors._

She’d tell him about Thelonious then, she decided. He deserved to know. He deserved to know his being fired was a two-part novel, and that security tape was only half of the story.

“My place at 7, then?” he said, wrapping his arms even more tightly around her, anchoring her to him in all the roiling seas of despair. His place. The place that held only happy memories for them. The place that would now be tainted by whatever they’d discuss, however those talks ended. But her heart was already heavy enough in her own home, and starting from a baseline of desolation would only make her emotions sink lower.

“That works for me,” she said, tightening her embrace accordingly. And as she closed her eyes again she fell into a kind of anguished hypnosis spurred by the dual rhythm of his heartbeat; _thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud._

_I-love._

_I-love._

_I-love._

_I-love._

_I love you._


	17. Of Pasts Forgotten and Futures Built

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry I wasn't great with updating this week - the election and life got in the way. And I promise I'll respond to comments from here on out. Just because I'm not saying anything back doesn't mean I'm not smiling and that they don't mean everything to me! <3 As always, thank you for reading.

“So, how far away will you be?” Abby asked, her stomach sinking.

The solo drive from Arkadia to Polis had been long and quiet, and she couldn’t bring herself to listen to that one song she loved most. The occasion didn’t merit it. He’d welcomed her with a smile as though nothing had changed, as though this were a normal Friday night instead of potentially their _last_ Friday night. But the occasion bled through in the rigidity of his gait, the twitching of his fingers, the tremor in his voice when he guided her to sit with him at a dining room table it broke her heart to imagine him sitting at all alone.

And it was there that she asked her question, both hoping for the future and waiting for the end.

“Five hours,” he said softly, eyes filled with emotion. “Well, six from Arkadia. I got a job as a professor in Trikru’s English department.”

Abby only heard the first four words of his sentence: the rest were lost to a deafening roar that had begun sounding in her ears, an intense ringing as though the end-of-class bell had sounded in her head and hers alone.

 _Six hours?_ Six hours, and he hadn’t thought to tell her until now? For God’s sake, how long had he known? Didn’t he think this was something of which she should have been made aware before he left? Granted, a few days’ prior notice wouldn’t have softened the blow much. But it would have been nice to have the extra time to come to terms with it.

“That’s…” she started, swallowed hard, took a deep breath. “A little farther than I thought.”

“I’m sorry, Abby,” he said, reaching for a hand she pulled just out of his reach. She wasn’t ready to touch him. Not yet. Not after this. Not after the atom bomb of a revelation he’d just dropped on her life, leaving her to clear the rubble. “I would have told you sooner, but-“

“How long have you known?” she asked, quiet, reserved. Part of her thought it was perhaps best not to know – there was some amount of bliss in ignorance – but her anger-tainted curiosity won out.

“Just since Wednesday,” he said. “That’s when I last talked to Indra, and she finalized it. I was trying to think of a good way to bring it up to you.”

Abby shook her head. “There isn’t a good way to bring up something like this. There’s no way to make it sound better. It is what it is. You don’t have to spare my feelings.”

“I know,” he said, all the usual sparkle in his eyes dimmed. “If there had been any other way, believe me, I would have taken it. This isn’t what I wanted.”

Six hours.

Plenty of people, she reminded herself, were in long-distance relationships. Just because she and Jake had spent the majority of their college years together didn’t mean that was the path the entirety of the human race chose. Hell, Callie and her girlfriend met online and lived three states away from each other. If they could make it work – and they did, they were happy – then she was confident she and Marcus could do the same.

But _six hours_.

Then again, Callie hadn’t had the benefit of working one door over from the woman she loved. She hadn’t been able to hear the sound of her voice if she left her door open. She hadn’t been able to eat lunch with her every day and lean her head on her shoulder and wander into her arms after a long, tiring Wednesday. For them, there was no adjustment. There was no contrast, no ‘before-and-after.’ Long distances were just another obstacle they’d overcome, another mountain they’d summited together. Callie and Tara, she thought, were likely to make it. Even across hundreds of miles.

Things were different for her and Marcus, to say the least.

She had memories of Marcus gazing at her from across a table as they sat and graded papers together, the lofty tone he adopted while reading lines from essays that didn’t make sense.

“Gatsby didn’t really love Daisy,” she remembered him muttering, indignant, proud. “That’s a decent argument, but Bryan, you have to back it up with _something_. How am I supposed to know you read the book?” She remembered thinking maybe he had his reputation for a reason, observing him as he pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose and continued on the red pen warpath.

Then she looked at her own comments on Octavia Blake’s lab report – _Octavia, see me after class. You’re missing five out of the ten questions on the assignment sheet._ And she decided perhaps they were made of a similar mold, she and him – or rather, made of similar material that had been shaped into different things. There was something oddly endearing about hearing him mutter as he graded, as if there were a brain-to-mouth-to-hand connection that couldn’t quite be broken. A smile formed and she went back to her stack of papers, wondering if he ever thought about her the same way.

She had memories of wrapping her arms around him as the temperature in the building cooled, as the lights in the hallways dimmed and the heaters spluttered into silence. She had memories of him ghosting his lips against her neck, flooding her entire body with warmth and a hot, desperate wanting. He’d awoken something within her that went into hibernation after Jake – something she thought she’d lost forever, something she thought was long-dead instead of asleep – and now that it was conscious, it was _hungry_.

But that was before Jaha. When they’d played by the rules, done everything they could to appease the higher powers, covered their tracks with dirt and mud and soil until they were untraceable. But they hadn’t been careful enough, hadn’t blurred every footprint, and now she was sitting across from Marcus Kane in an apartment that would soon belong to someone else. And all their memories would scatter like snowflakes in the wind, blown about by time and distance until they melted on the sidewalk.

Six hours.

“Abby, say something,” he whispered. “Please.”

The unfettered sadness in his voice nearly broke her – the weight of it all, the blurry suggestion that one more pound of desolation could quiet the music of the man she knew, make his poetry fall silent. And she knew she must look the same – tired, weary, worn down – exhausted from living in the milliseconds they’d tried to stretch to span years. The elastic had worn thin and snapped, and now they’d both been stung.

“Moving away was your only option?” she said, shocked by how hollow her voice sounded. Empty but wavering, strong but cracking. “There was _nothing_ closer?”

He sighed, moved his hand off the table to rub his eyes. If the slump of his shoulders was any indication, he’d thought of this before. He’d anticipated her question. In true Marcus Kane fashion, he knew her better than she knew herself.

“I was going to wait to talk about this,” he said with a deep sigh, voice heavy under the weight of resignation. “Until we had more of a history, until I knew it wouldn’t change what you thought of me. But now…I think you deserve an explanation.”

Abby frowned. What could he mean, ‘change what she thought of him?’ Was there something he’d been hiding from her since their relationship began? She wanted, more than anything, to answer that question with a resounding ‘no.’ The Marcus she knew, the Marcus she loved, the Marcus who kissed her and held her and took her on fairy-tale dates…he was the real Marcus Kane. Wasn’t he? And was she strong enough, in this moment, to find out if he wasn’t?

“Marcus,” she said, reaching for his hand; this time, it was he who pulled away. A shadow had fallen over him, a sort of deep despair, and she yearned more than anything to close the distance between them and hold him close. Whatever was bothering him, it could most likely wait.

After all, she hadn’t told him about Thelonious and she was starting to think tonight wouldn’t be the right night to talk about it, either. Not with the sudden turn his mood had taken. “If you don’t want to talk about it-“

“No, I owe you an explanation,” he said, inhaling and exhaling deeply. “As to why I can’t get another job here in Polis. I know what you’re thinking, Abby, even if you won’t say it.”

Abby couldn’t help herself: she frowned. _He_ can’t _get another job here?_

“Go on,” she said instead of comforting him, pragmatism winning out over emotion.

“Before I worked at Arkadia, I had a job at The Ark,” he began, leaning back, allowing the memory to overtake him. The Ark, Abby knew, was one of the largest corporations in Polis – a veritable behemoth in a city of giants. She wasn’t sure exactly what they did – a doctor’s knowledge only extended so far, after all – but she was confident it was important. “It paid well – far better than a teacher’s salary. They hired me straight out of college after I spent a summer interning there, and I moved up the ranks every year.”

He paused, took another deep breath.

“I was working in corporate downsizing, which was – to put it lightly – a less-than-pleasant place to be. Or at least it would have been, for most.”

Abby wasn’t completely certain what corporate downsizing _did_ , but she could do the math. Downsizing was never a good thing, and if she had to guess…Marcus Kane’s visits had cost more than a few Ark employees their jobs. Looking at him now, his back rigid and expression pained, wearing a loose-fitting gray shirt and jeans…it was hard to reconcile this image with one of a corporate shark, a man on a monetary mission. They almost felt like two different people to her: the Marcus she knew and this stranger, this man who existed in a completely different world.

“But for years I justified it to myself by saying I was doing what was best for the company, making the tough calls for the company,” he continued. “Someday, I thought, I’d look back on it and be proud. I’d tell myself it was all still standing because of my team and I.”

He shook his head, lost in a sea of memory out of which Abby couldn’t have pulled him if she tried. “I was deluded.”

“You might not have seen it from the outside, but even The Ark was affected by the stock market in 2008. Even the giant, it seemed, wasn’t too big to fall. You would think I’d have read the writing on the wall. Known what was coming. But like the devoted soldier I was, I kept marching along and waiting for my orders.”

He broke eye contact, telling his story to the table instead of her.

“320 people,” he said. “I had to let an entire factory know they’d all been terminated. That was the largest number I ever had to give the news in a day, and afterward…I wasn’t the same, Abby. I felt like someone had taken every emotion I possessed and stolen it. I tried to tell myself I did the right thing, that this was what The Ark needed to survive. I tried to remember what our CEO told me, the metaphor he’d given me – that there wasn’t enough air for us all. That if everyone stayed on board, we’d all suffocate. And I believed it without a single question. I took his orders and walked away. What kind of person-”

“Marcus-“ she interjected as his voice began trembling dangerously, swaying like a poorly-constructed bridge in the middle of a storm. He quieted her with a wave of his hand under the white light, bit his lower lip to keep it from trembling.

“I walked around the factory after it was empty. I didn’t usually do that – under normal circumstances I would have flown out the same day – but corporate couldn’t get me a flight back to Polis until the next morning.

And on the last leg of my self-guided tour, I heard a crunch as I was walking down an aisle. I looked down, and there was a little girl’s barrette under my foot. I still remember it like it was yesterday; the glitter, the chipped pink paint, how it cracked in two under my weight. These people had families, Abby. Wives, husbands, children counting on them. And with two words I –“

“You did what you had to do,” Abby said. Watching him suffer like this was unbearable, and she felt as though her heart were crawling up her throat and leaving an aching hole in her chest. The corners of her eyes burned, and she heard a sniffle from his side of the table. “You were following orders. Marcus, you can’t blame yourself for that.”

He shook his head, ever the image of a teacher whose student wasn’t grasping the material. “That’s what I told myself, too. At first. But it started keeping me up at night. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I kept seeing their faces – the man who started crying in our meeting, the man who asked me how he was going to support his daughter now that his family’s income was down to nothing. It affected me so badly that I started investigating company financial reports, looking where no one else dared to look. And do you know what I found?”

Abby shook her head, blinking rapidly to keep the tears from falling. This Marcus – he wasn’t the man who fired people. Whoever this story was about, it wasn’t him. Her Marcus and that man were as different as night and day, even if he didn’t believe it himself.

“They didn’t have to be fired. There was enough money in the budget to keep all 320 of them. But because our CEO wanted to keep as much of his previous salary as he could, we let them go. And I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.”

He looked at her for the first time then, a pained gaze colliding with a lightning bolt of shock.

“After that, I couldn’t stay at The Ark. So I walked out. Doing _that_ was unheard of, and my CEO swore I’d never work in Polis again and did his damnedest to make it happen. Not that I would have wanted another job at a corporation, after what happened.”

The puzzle pieces were starting to fit together now. How he could afford such a huge place. Why he devoted himself to teaching. Why he often seemed rough around the edges, a cypher until she’d cracked the code. He’d learned to scramble the data of his past, encrypted it with an unbreakable firewall, but Abby had managed to work her way between the lines.

She didn’t know if she was proud or ashamed.

“I told myself I wasn’t going to punish people anymore, I wasn’t going to discipline them just for existing,” he said. “I was going to build instead of destroying. And I decided the best way to do that was to become a teacher – I didn’t get along horribly with kids, and I already had marketable degrees. So I went back to school and got my certificate, and when the job market repaired itself Jaha hired me.”

With a sigh, he drew his tale to a close.

“But I lost people, Abby,” he said, his voice cracking as his lips formed her name. “My mother and I haven’t spoken in years. And if you’re appalled with me because of it, I wouldn’t blame you. You have every right to be. If you want to walk out the door right now, I won’t stop you.”

 _So that’s why there aren’t any family pictures._ His mother couldn’t handle his chosen career, and he couldn’t handle her disapproval. Abby couldn’t imagine that – going through what he went through, and doing it alone. The sleepless nights, the ruminations, all without a comforting embrace or a reassuring word. He’d been the man with emotions of steel, but what he’d done had melted him.

There was nothing she could say, no words capable of repairing the damage those memories and experiences had inflicted upon him. So instead of talking, she rose from her seat and pushed in her chair.

His face fell, losing what little hope remained in his desolate expression. It was clear that he expected her to take his last piece of advice and leave. That this would be the last he’d ever see of her, that his revelation had shattered their already fraying relationship.

But instead of turning around and making her way toward the exit, Abby circled the table and sat in the seat next to him. She took both of his trembling hands in her own, stared him straight in the eyes as she spoke.

“Marcus Kane,” she said, leaning forward to brush a stray strand of hair from his wide eyes. “It’s going to take a lot more than six hours and a bad experience with The Ark to get me to walk out the door.”

She rested her hand on the side of his face, stroked the gentle scratchiness of his salt-and-pepper beard. If he truly thought she’d leave him because of the man he’d been nearly ten years ago – a man she knew he no longer even remotely resembled – he didn’t know her at all.

“You’re not him,” she said, scooting closer in her seat to close the distance between them, gently nudging him forward to rest her forehead against his. The warmth of his skin and the heat of his breath made her dizzy, lightheaded, intoxicated despite the weight of the conversation’s topic and the awkward angle at which they met. “I know you, Marcus. I know who you are. And you’re not the man who fired 320 people. You might have been, once, but you’re not him now.”

“How do you know?” he whispered. “I slammed doors in your face for months. I said horrible, terrible things to you. I-“

“You took the fall for me when I should have lost my job,” she interrupted him, unwilling to listen to another word of what she considered to be a misguided self-evaluation. “You fixed – or you _tried_ to fix - my car when you could have just left. You gave Bellamy Blake your copy of The Iliad, which I now know is worth over 300 dollars.”

“How did you…?” he asked, and she remembered too late that he had no inclination of Bellamy’s involvement in her failed plan. _Oops._ But that was an explanation for a later time, a story meant for dinner plates and wine instead of whispers and carefully-disguised tears.

“My point is, we’re not just one thing,” she said, remembering her own regrets as a doctor. Patients she thought she should have been able to save, if only she’d done one thing differently. If only she’d been able to get to them sooner. If only she’d operated on them quicker.

She’d learned that dwelling on those ‘if only’s’ would drive even the most self-assured of medical professionals away from their field, and she loved helping people too much to leave over something as simple as self-doubt.

“We’re not black and white, Marcus. We’re not good or bad. The way I see it, we’ve all made mistakes. But as long as the good deeds we’ve done cancel them out, as long as we meant to do the right thing, they’re not mistakes. They’re learning experiences.”

She slipped a hand into his hair, felt his trembling slow and stop altogether.

“Trust me,” she whispered with a faint laugh. “I’m a doctor.”

* * *

 

And fifteen minutes later, after a long, comforting embrace, they sat on their couch and stared out at the city. Clothes remained firmly in place this time – Abby knew she needed to go back home to Clarke, Marcus knew they had a lot to talk about, and they both knew things wouldn’t be the same after tonight.

Abby snuggled closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder as she brought her legs up onto the soft suede. He always seemed warmer than her, as if his temperature were set to some higher degree, and her sweater wasn’t quite warm enough to expunge the winter chill. But even if she hadn’t been cold, she would have wanted to be as close to him as possible. Because the number of times she could have him like this were dwindling rapidly, counting down like a doomsday clock, and it was only a matter of time until it reached zero.

“When do you leave?” she asked, realizing they’d never broached the subject.

“Sunday,” he said softly, and every muscle in her body tensed. _Sunday?_ How the hell was he going to get everything packed up by then? “Indra’s letting me have Monday and Tuesday to get settled, and I’ll start on Wednesday.”

Instead of betraying her disappointment, Abby simply nodded.

“That’s nice of her,” she said, trying to keep her focus on the Polis lights, the way they twinkled against the backdrop of gray clouds and porcelain snow. But it was so hard to think about them as though she hadn’t seen them before, to gaze at them through brand-new eyes when the last time she’d seen this view had been when they were completely, utterly lost in each other. “How do you two know each other?”

Marcus smiled, his gaze growing wistful. “I met Indra in college,” he said. “We both appreciated nature – hiking, biking, running – and bonded over our shared interests. She wasn’t much interested in politics or business, but she appreciated some of the same works of literature I did. We stayed close well into our adulthood. Honestly, she’s one of the only people I keep in touch with from my days at Mount Weather.”

Abby ignored the tiny little nagging voice inside her that yearned to question him on whether or not he and Indra had ever dated. That didn’t matter, that was irrelevant, and she’d been with Jake back then anyway. But damn, she was a little curious.

“She was bitten by a Diamondback on one of our hikes, and I carried her back to the trailhead,” he said. “After I got her to a hospital and they stabilized her condition, the doctors told me I saved her life. Since then she’s insisted she’s in my debt.”

“Wow,” Abby said with a small smile and a shake of her head. “You’re a regular Bear Grylls.”

“Who?” he asked, tilting his head to the side in the epitome of unfettered confusion, and she remembered not everyone shared her former husband and daughter’s affinity for Discovery Channel survival shows.

“Never mind,” Abby dismissed his inquiry, deciding to move the conversation along instead of explaining her reference. “I don’t blame her for wanting to repay you, though. You really did save her life. If she’d walked on that leg, it might have caused the venom to spread.”

“What she’s doing for me is above and beyond anything I’d ever thought possible,” he said, declining to take credit in what she knew to be true “Marcus” fashion. “But considering I can’t work here in Polis, I thought I should honor her offer.”

Now, Abby thought, it made sense. This was as much about honoring old friendships and repaying debts as it was moving cities, and she could understand why Marcus would feel both pushed from Polis and obligated to accept his friend’s offer. As much as she despised the thought of being so far from him, she could understand it.

“Aren’t you going to have to sell this, then? Eventually?” she asked, gesturing to her surroundings. She felt a pang of sorrow at the thought of his apartment belonging to someone else, someone else walking through his entryway and preparing dishes on his counter and sleeping in his bed. Things changed, she knew, but for some odd reason she’d thought of Marcus Kane’s downtown apartment as a unique, beautiful constant. How that connection had solidified and why they’d become so inseparable in her mind, she’d never fully understand. But the thought of someone else here, someone else making this space their home…it was enough to make her sick to her stomach.

“That’s the thing,” Marcus said, something unreadable hiding in his tone. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long to find out what it was. “I was wondering if you might want to share it.”

Abby’s jaw dropped. She pushed herself away from him to look directly in his dark chocolate eyes, disbelieving that she’d truly heard what her brain told her had come from his lips.  _Share this place?_ How…how would they even begin to do that? It was a penthouse apartment in Polis, for God’s sake. She didn’t have a background in the business world and would have to send her daughter to college on a teacher’s salary and their combined savings. Even half the rent on this place would wipe her accounts clean in less than a year, of that she was certain.

It was a lovely gesture, though, she thought with no small amount of sorrow. It meant something more than Marcus wanting to keep the home he’d had for – well, however long he’d had it. Just the fact that he wanted to share it with her, make it theirs instead of just his…it was enough to make a lump form in her throat. He’d be far away, but this was his way of keeping her close. Of giving her a piece of him to hold when she couldn’t be in his arms.

“Marcus, I-“ she stuttered, planting her feet firmly on the ground and sitting up straight. “I can’t even begin to think-“

“I can have it set up with building management, let them know what we're doing. There wouldn’t be any rent to pay,” he offered, but she shook her head. It was all she could do to combat the rush of dizziness that swept over her, enflamed by the warmth in her stomach and the pounding in her head, and she grabbed the armrest just to stay upright.

“I’m not a charity case,” she said firmly. “I have a salary. If you needed me to chip in, I would. I’m just not sure if-”

He cut her short with a light laugh, worlds removed from the man who’d confessed the sins of his past to her just a half-hour earlier. “Abby, I own it. I bought this place while I still worked for The Ark. The reason I said there wasn’t any rent is because I’m not paying it, either.”

She stared at him, then at the twinkling city, then back at him again. He might not have been paying rent, but she doubted he had completely paid off the cost. And if they entered into some sort of binding agreement, she’d feel obligated to help him with that debt. Not that she couldn’t handle it – between the two of them, she was confident that they could – but she’d call this place what it was in terms of their relationship. It was a love nest, a kind of home away from home, the place where they’d slept together and laughed together and realized just how deeply the well of their shared feelings ran.

There was something about it that transcended the classiness of it all, the high-society vibe that never quite matched the sweet, kind man she’d grown to adore more fervently with each beat of her heart. But perhaps, she thought, that was why it didn’t match. It wasn’t meant to be just his. It wasn’t meant to belong to just Marcus Kane, businessman-turned-teacher-turned-professor. It was meant to be theirs. It was meant to be something they shared, a concrete relic of their relationship.

That idea, as impractical as part of her insisted it was, had an alluring air to it. It was seductive, entrancing. The thought of sharing this place with him, a place that held so much significance to them…it was almost irresistible.

 _Almost_.

“How much?” she asked, raising her eyebrows and relaxing her ironclad grip on the armrest.

“Abby, I told you not to worry about it,” he sighed with a smile. He reached forward and took her hand, the warmth of his grip drawing a quiet sigh from between her parted lips.

“If we’re sharing it, I’m going to help with the cost,” she insisted. “Whatever it is. Give me a number, and I’ll pay it.” She paused, thought about what she said, and revised it. “Well, within reason. I have to send my daughter to college.”

“We can figure that out later,” he said, reaching for her to wrap an arm around her shoulders. She moved closer again, relishing the solidness of him, realizing she’d taken for granted the simple pleasure that lived in these moments. She’d thought they’d have months, years to spend like this. Now that she’d found they only had two days…the realization stung.

It would be nice, she thought, to have somewhere to go to spend quiet nights alone. To have a place to go when the memories in her house were too loud for her to hear herself think, too suffocating for her to breathe. And in temperatures that danced along the subzero line, going for a walk to clear her head wasn’t always an option.

No, it wouldn’t be the same to be here without him – to her, this place would always be his first and hers second – but there would be some amount of comfort in the knowledge that he’d been there, that this was a place filled with firsts for them. Even as a doctor, she found something oddly poetic in that. Everywhere she looked she saw relics of him; a shelf filled with old books, a grandfather clock that chimed on the hour, and a series of impressionist paintings that were as beautiful as they were difficult to understand. It all glowed with the aura of Marcus Kane, and even that annoying six-hour distance wouldn’t wash it away.

“Wait,” he murmured, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead as she gave an almost involuntary hum of contentment. “You’re not fighting me on this? You’re saying yes?”

She smiled. “Well, I’m not saying ‘no.’ As long as you let me contribute. Unless Indra’s paying your rent at Trikru, too?”

“She’s not,” Marcus said quickly.

“I didn’t think so,” Abby responded. “Those apartments were expensive when I went there. I can only imagine what rent is up to now.”

He cringed, his brow furrowing in the dim light. “Guess I’ll find out.”

“I guess you will,” she remarked, teasing him. Something told her he wouldn’t have a problem paying whatever outrageous amount Trikru’s apartment complexes required.

They let their conversation idle for a few minutes, gazing out at the city as Marcus trailed his fingers up and down the length of her arm. It was almost impossible to accept that moments like this were on a timer for them now, winding down like showers of sand in an hourglass. Each second that passed was another grain gone, and Abby wanted more than anything to make each moment count.

“So…” he said, trailing off. It was apparent where the second half of his sentence had been going.

“I haven’t done this before,” Abby admitted, suddenly feeling insecure, exposed, all her uncertainties laid bare before them. “Long-distance, I mean.”

The downside of getting married so young was that she hadn’t experimented much, sampled different kinds of relationships and savored what worked. Jake worked, that much was obvious. And Marcus worked. But this six-hour gap was a mountain she’d never summited before, and she wasn’t sure how best to begin the climb.

“Neither have I,” Marcus said. “I just thought…we should probably…”

“Talk about what we want?” Abby finished for him, and he nodded with overt enthusiasm. “Where we’re going?”

“Right,” he said, a little too firmly: it was clear he was nervous. Even in the twilight glow she could see the tinge of red in his cheeks – a rapidly deepening crimson as his posture tensed, his fingers drummed a steady rhythm against the tan cushions – and realized he was just as uncertain as she was. Neither of them had been in this position before. They were two teachers, completely clueless, learning these lessons in love with hands and hearts intertwined.

And in her soul, in her hopeful core, she knew that as long as they kept their minds and hearts open they’d be okay. They’d make it.

Together.

Because if Abby Griffin understood love the way she thought she did, there was no distance too great for it to span or any obstacle too great for it to overcome. After all, she still loved a man whose voice she hadn’t heard in over a year, whose embrace she’d never again feel, whose lips would never again touch hers. If love could endure that challenge, defy time and space in such a profound, inexplicable way, the six-hour gap would be next to nothing. _Should_ be next to nothing.

“We’re still going to be in the same time zone,” Marcus noted. “Although we might not be getting out of work at the same time.”

Abby nodded. “My evenings are usually pretty free, so we could talk then. Clarke and I eat dinner around six or seven, so after that would be best for me.” She paused for a moment, turned to him with a wry smirk. “It would be nice to have company while I’m doing the dishes.”

He grinned, understanding her reference, and Abby felt some of the lead weight in her heart begin to melt and lift away. Seeing him happy – not nervous, apprehensive, or filled with dread – was a mood-booster all its own, and she felt her own negative emotions begin falling away.

“I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t work,” Marcus said. “Indra and I are going to meet on Monday and talk specifics, but I don’t think I'll be on campus that late.”

She stared out at the city with a smile, noticed as a few tiny snowflakes drifted down from the clouds like white flower petals and landed gracefully on Marcus’ windowsill. “That would be quite a night,” she said, imagining the mountain of paperwork that would trap him on campus until the sun dipped below the horizon.

He made a noise of agreement, looking from her to the snow with a contented sigh. “I might be able to make a trip back in a few weeks, once I’ve settled in. We could spend the weekend together, if you want; in Arkadia, here, somewhere else…it doesn’t matter much to me.”

An electric thrill ran through her at his offer, the unfettered sincerity in his tone. He was leaving as much unspoken as he’d said aloud, but the implication was clear. It didn’t matter where they were, as long as they were together. Not only was he giving her access to his apartment, he was willing to drive back hundreds of miles after taking a new job just to see her for a few days.

But it was hardly fair to make him drive the entire distance, she thought.

“Or we could meet halfway,” she suggested in a tone that wasn’t really a suggestion at all. It was her “teacher voice,” the voice she used on Jasper and Monty when they were discussing something that had little to do with Human Anatomy – a gentle suggestion backed by foundations of steel.

“Abby…” he sighed, knowing fully well where she was headed.

“You shouldn’t have to drive six hours there and six hours back. So you’re either letting me give you money for gas, or we’re meeting halfway. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it, Kane.”

The words were out before she could stop them, and she’d meant them as a lighthearted joke, but she really, _really_ hoped he wouldn’t leave it.

He raised his eyebrows, one corner of his lip quirking in a half-smile that made her heartbeat quicken. Even like this, after a long night of talking and soul-searching and fighting their way to come out the other side unscathed, he was still almost _unbearably_ attractive. Abby knew she should be exhausted – both mentally and emotionally – but there was something energizing about seeing him like this. He was contented, cheerful, teasing. Happy.

And if he was happy, she was, too.

“Oh, so we’re making deals now, _Doctor Griffin_?” Marcus said, his smirk morphing into a full-blown grin. He paused for a moment as he stared into her eyes, calculating his next move. Almost subconsciously, she began leaning forward.

Abby felt a smile begin to form as her cheeks flushed, realized she hadn’t heard him tease her like this since Sunday morning. Everything had gone downhill so quickly, so breathtakingly painfully, that they hadn’t had time to fill their lungs and bind their wounds. This was the beginning of that process, and it was as beautiful as it was tragic. A sunrise over a battlefield.

This time she initiated the kiss, pulling his mouth down to hers by wrapping her fingers around the length of his striped tie. Despite their lack of time, it wasn’t frantic; there was no tearing of clothes, no tugging on hair, no shoving each other back against the cushions in a lustful, adoring frenzy. After all, this time there were no corsets, suits, or stilettos. There had been nothing simmering in the air between them for an entire evening, nothing to boil over as soon as her back was flat against the softness of the suede. But she couldn’t help thinking that this was its own kind of intimate, alluring in its casualness, seductive in its simplicity.

They readjusted positions so they lay facing each other, Marcus gradually pulling her closer until she was flush against him. Heat had begun building between her thighs from the moment their lips met, and every sigh and groan as she moved her mouth from his lips to his jawline brought it closer to igniting. There were so many things they wouldn’t be able to do once he left, and this was most _certainly_ one of them.

But her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his shirt – this was a damn awkward angle to try to get it off him, and his tie was absolutely infuriating. And he seemed to be struggling just as much with her sweater and skirt, reaching around her to try to drag the zipper down with no measurable success.

“We did this in the wrong order,” she murmured, and she felt him smile against her mouth. 

“Well, we’re still learning,” he said, eyes shining with delight. And she knew what he meant in the context of the moment – they hadn’t yet gotten the hang of the whole ‘intimacy’ thing, especially when several layers of clothing were involved – but to some extent it applied to more than just their inability to free each other of their shirts and underwear and everything in-between. There was so much they were still discovering about each other, about their feelings. Even tonight, Marcus had opened himself up to her in a way she was confident he hadn’t to many others in his life, if anyone. He’d bared his soul and given it to her, and she’d welcomed it with open arms.

They had much to learn about long-distance, about how to make that time difference feel much less than it was. But as long as they kept their commitment to learning, to listening, to each other…they had nothing about which to be worried.

But she wouldn’t say any of that aloud, not when her entire body ached for him. Those sentiments could wait for a time when the thought of him inside her wasn’t stealing the breath from her lungs, pooling wetness between her thighs.

So, by an unspoken agreement they both swung their legs around and began neutralizing the most infuriating of their wardrobe choices: Abby made short work of her skirt, and Marcus did away with his tie in short order. She glanced back at him in the heat of the moment, her pulse racing. Part of her realized she’d have to come up with a damn good excuse to give Clarke about why she’d spent over four hours with Marcus tonight when she said she’d be back in two, and part of her thought her daughter would likely crunch the numbers and figure it out on her own. But what kind of mother would she be if she didn’t at least offer a G-rated explanation?

Much to her dismay, Marcus wasn’t looking at her; he was looking past her, out the window, out at the city. So Abby rotated in the opposite direction, tearing herself from the image of him in nothing but his underwear to see what was so enrapturing out there.

But once her eyes fell on the window, she understood.

It wasn’t ‘just snowing’ anymore. The sky no longer blanketed the pavement with flower-petal flakes. Instead what fell were giant clumps of white crystals, rocketing rapidly toward the ground, obscuring their view of even the law firm across the street. White-out conditions, these certainly were.

 _Well_. Maybe she wouldn’t have to explain herself to Clarke, after all.

“Looks like I’m going to be snowed in again,” she said, and Marcus laughed.

“I’d like to think the conditions are a little better this time.”

She shrugged, began unbuttoning her shirt as he slid closer and pressed warm kisses to her neck. A shiver ran down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold, and she hated herself for choosing not to wear a sweater that day. One tug, and it would have been off.

“A little.”

He laughed again as she tossed her shirt across the room – finally – and he guided her back against the couch to position her head on a shimmering red pillow.

“A little,” he remarked. “I can live with that.”


	18. Of Separations and Surprises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this chapter title sucks, but it's all I could think of. :P Anyway, for those who might be wondering, I'm thinking this'll have three or four more chapters and I'll probably have it finished by the end of November.

“Hey,” Abby said, beaming as bubbles formed under spirals of steam. Usually dishes were something she dreaded – one of the worst parts of her night. But since she and Marcus had begun talking during “dishes hour,” she’d slowly grown to enjoy the activity more and more. She wouldn’t say she rushed through dinner to get to the dishes, but…talking to Marcus always made her heart skip.

“Hey, Abby,” Marcus responded, his voice warmer than the water pouring from the faucet and splashing into her sink. “How did the meal turn out?”

She set the phone down on the counter, pressing the icon for speakerphone and turning to plop a few bowls into the sink. Shepard’s Pie had been quite a struggle to make, but thanks to Marcus’ advice she’d managed to cobble together something that wasn’t just passable: it was delectable. Clarke was shocked when she said she made it on her own. Somewhat sarcastically, she’d asked where Marcus was hiding.

Even though she knew it was a joke, Abby found herself fighting a few unwelcome pangs of sorrow that radiated from her chest to the rest of her body. Because Marcus wasn’t hiding anywhere. Marcus was six hours away teaching Classic Literature to college kids, a job he seemed to genuinely enjoy with a friend with whom he insisted Abby would get along. Marcus was here and gone all the same, present in his cooking advice and absent in person.

Sometimes that hurt like a punch to the chest, like having all the air stolen from her lungs. Looking across the hallway at the substitute teacher – Ms. Byrne – had become something of an unnerving habit, a continually unanswered question that started from the moment he left. She’d grown so accustomed to sharing quick little glances with him while the kids worked on assignments and giving him tiny waves between periods that his absence hadn’t yet completely sunk in, and the admittedly strict Byrne hadn’t exactly taken kindly to the habit.

And then there was Thelonious. But Abby didn’t want to think about Thelonious, his completely unnecessary visits to her room after the last class of the day, his constant inquiries about “how she was doing” now that Marcus had left. No matter how she insisted she was fine (and she and Marcus were still together, thank you very much) it never seemed to be enough to get him to just _go away_. As long as he had the upper hand over her with that damn tape, there would be no getting rid of Thelonious Jaha. Or so it seemed.

Marcus didn’t need to know that, though. Marcus had enough on his plate with adjusting to his new job and grading essays and all the pressure inherent with teaching higher education: she could handle Thelonious.

“It was great,” Abby said, turning back to her phone and picking it up, taking it off of speaker and cradling it between her neck and her shoulder. “Clarke loved it. She thought you made it, actually.”

He laughed, a sound that warmed her heart even over the phone. “If you want, I can tell her it wasn’t me. If proof is absolutely necessary.”

Then it was her turn to laugh, sticking her hands in the soapy water and finding the dishrag she’d thrown in. “Lexa might need proof, if she were here. But I think Clarke believes me. Either that, or she was so happy to have a home-cooked meal she didn’t care.”

“Speaking of Clarke, how did the election go?” Marcus said, choosing not to comment on her remark about her cooking. Abby’s grin widened. They’d been so lost in their discussion of Shepard’s Pie that she’d forgotten to tell him the most obvious piece of good news. Scrubbing a bowl until its porcelain was once again white, her words tumbled out in an excited heap.

“She won, Marcus. She was re-elected over _Ontari_.”

“That’s great!” he exclaimed. “Winning over Ontari Azgeda…that’s quite a feat. She should be proud, and so should you.”

Abby could picture him smiling as he spoke: the way his eyes twinkled when he was genuinely thrilled, how he seemed to light up from the inside out, an image of true vitality. More than anything, she wished she could see that smile.

_Wait._

She could. She could see his smile.

How could they have been so _stupid_?

“Hey, Marcus?” she said, wiping her hands on a stray dishtowel she’d tossed on the counter. They hadn’t done this yet – after all, it had only been a month since he’d moved to Trikru, he’d been busy, and she hadn’t wanted to seem clingy – but this was a special occasion, and seemed to merit it. “Do you know how to FaceTime?”

The ten-second silence on the other side of the conversation did all the talking necessary.

“It’s not hard,” Abby added, picturing the adorable frown that must have been forming over his features. “I can take care of the technical stuff on this end if I call you. You just have to pick up. It’s basically Skype.”

“Oh,” Marcus gave a long sigh, finally arriving at a point of understanding. Abby fought the urge to roll her eyes. Hadn’t he ever experimented with the green videocamera app on his phone before? “So I can see you, then?”

Then she did roll her eyes, gave a snort. “Seriously? You don’t know what FaceTime is?”

“Is it related to Facebook? They both start with Face…that has to mean something. Right?”

_He’s so buried in his books that he hasn’t come out of them to experience the 21 st century. God, Marcus. It’s a wonder you’re calling me and not just sending love letters._

He had, actually, sent her a love letter. But the contents of that note had been enough to have her blushing for the rest of the evening – made her flush crimson to the point where it almost looked like she’d been sunburned, to the point where Clarke asked her if she’d caught the fever making its rounds through Arkadia – and she stowed it away in her work bag. Not that Clarke had a penchant for snooping, but…better safe than sorry. Especially considering her daughter had been keeping in touch with Raven, who Abby imagined would be quite interested in that letter’s contents.

Marcus might have been awkward in talking about those things, but he sure as hell had a talent for writing them down. The perks of dating an English professor, she guessed.

“I’m going to get my laptop,” she said, smirking. “I’ll call you back in five minutes. All you have to do is hit the green button when it pops up on your screen. Do you think you can handle that, Professor?”

His gentle snort translated as a rush of static. “You might be asking too much of me, Abby.”

“Think of it as a learning experience,” she grinned, and hung up before he could say goodbye with an uncharacteristically girlish giggle she hoped no one heard. Long forgotten, the dishes sat unattended in the sink while she moved toward the living room, opened her work bag and yanked her laptop from the pouch on the side. It took only a few moments to find him in her contacts and click his name.

“Hey, it worked!” he exclaimed after a few moments of solidifying the connection, his wide smile a mirror image of hers. “I can see you!”

She bit her lower lip, overwhelmed at seeing him again. Imagining how he looked and seeing him were two different things, but for once her mind’s eye aligned with reality; he was indeed wearing the black long-sleeved shirt she loved him in, the one that fit just a little tighter than the others and faintly exposed the lines of chiseled muscles on his chest. His glasses were perched on the bridge of his nose, and she assumed he must have been doing some grading when he called.

“That’s what technology is good for, Marcus,” she said, using teasing to mask the rush of emotion that swept over her at seeing his face again. If she’d known how much more poignant seeing him would make those feelings – yearning, hunger, sadness - maybe she would have thought twice. “It’s a wonderful thing. You should try it sometime.”

“Hey, I’m making progress,” he defended himself, playfully raising his hands in mock surrender. “You got me to do…whatever this is.”

“FaceTime.”

“I still don’t see how that has nothing to do with Face _book_ , but all right. I admit this is useful. It’s nice to see your face instead of just hearing your voice.”

She sighed, realizing those dishes weren’t getting done anytime soon. Not that it mattered – she had more pressing matters to which to attend. If the worst that happened was that the decades-old dishwasher got some use…well, it probably still worked.

“I know,” she said, feeling that all-too-familiar pang of remorse. For all she claimed to understand technology, she hadn’t used FaceTime since a few summers ago when Clarke went to camp. If only she’d remembered what that green app was for… “It’s good to see you, too. Well, over my computer screen.”

“Better than nothing,” he said, his phrase more of a question than a statement.

“Absolutely,” she agreed. “It’s definitely an improvement.”

“So, how are things at Arkadia?” he asked with a raise of his eyebrows, an edge in his tone. As happy as he was at Trikru, Abby sensed he missed his old job. Or maybe it wasn’t the job itself he missed – maybe it was the kids. Either way, he wasn’t entirely over his position as Marcus Kane, AP Government and Classics teacher.

And she had to tell him. She had to tell him about Thelonious, sooner rather than later. Abby hated keeping things from him, especially something like this. Even though there was nothing going on between them – Abby would sooner quit her job and leave the state than do anything that resembled going on a date with Thelonious Jaha – she couldn’t help feeling a little guilty for keeping it quiet.

But it wasn’t a subject for a phone call or FaceTime, she thought. It was something to discuss between the two of them, something that needed to be addressed in-person and as a couple. Jaha was, as always, an annoyance. She tolerated him because she had to, because he was still her boss and it seemed nothing she did would be cause enough to get her fired. Marcus, on the other hand…Marcus had nothing forcing him to conform to respect for his former boss.

If she mentioned it now, her uncertainty would be ended. She could put it in the past where it belonged, deal with the future, live in the present.

“Not bad,” Abby said instead, keeping the subject for his visit next weekend. “They miss you. The kids and the teachers.”

He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I doubt that. The kids have to be getting better grades from whoever they brought in to fill my position.”

Abby cringed. According to Clarke, Byrne was worse than Marcus had been and had a quarter of his humor. “Actually…”

“Oh no,” Marcus said, his face falling. “Enrollment in that class is going to plummet. Is it really that bad?”

“Well, she gave Clarke a C on her last paper. So it’s not great.”

Abby remembered the day Clarke brought that paper home; the rage written in every inch of her expression. Her daughter was in no way used to scoring anything other than A’s, and while she took every opportunity to learn Abby couldn’t help but wonder if her performance in that class was clouded by the absence of her teacher.

“I doubt she deserved that,” Marcus observed. “I wish I could read it and give her a grade.”

“She’d probably like that,” Abby said, noticing a strand of hair had drifted over his forehead and wishing she could brush it away as she’d been so apt to do before he left. “She trusts your judgment more than Ms. Byrne’s, anyway.”

“Byrne,” he repeated. “She sounds strict, I have to admit. Something about the name.”

“She might warm up to us,” Abby said, giving him a pointed look while drumming her fingernails against the kitchen table. “I remember someone else who started out pretty strict and turned out to be a softie.”

“I’ll blame it on the alcohol,” he mused with a grin, and Abby would’ve given him a gentle punch on the shoulder had he actually been sitting next to her at her kitchen table instead of hundreds of miles away.

“I’m going to the apartment tomorrow after work,” she announced, sitting up a little straighter.

“No big Friday night plans?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively as he leaned back a bit in his seat.

“My big Friday night plans,” she said, the right corner of her lips quirking upward, “involve sitting on the couch in your living room with a glass of wine. Oh, and I might finish that book.”

She still had to combat the urge to call it ‘his’ apartment, ‘his’ couch – the reality hadn’t yet sunk in that it was a place they shared. Since Marcus wasn’t selling it the management hadn’t gotten upset about Abby taking partial ownership, although the lady at the front desk still looked at her strangely every time she walked in the building. Apparently, their conduct on the night of their date hadn’t been forgotten.

“That book” was one of Marcus’ recommendations – a novel called “Wuthering Heights” that apparently he made all his kids read when he worked at Arkadia. Though she didn’t find any of the characters extremely likeable – a few she found positively detestable - she had to admit it was well written. And there was something oddly poetic about the tragedy, something beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. Fifty Shades of Grey, it certainly was not.

But that was part of the deal they’d made. Abby would read a book of Marcus’ choosing, and she’d make him watch one of her favorite movies. Then, once they were finished, they’d offer each other their reviews. So Marcus Kane, a man whose heart belonged to the mystery and drama realm of the cinema, would find himself watching James Cameron’s Titanic.

“Let me know what you think of it,” Marcus said, showing his intrigue as he leaned forward a bit. “It has a powerful ending, in my opinion. A few of my kids cried.”

“I’ll give you a full review,” she said. “Speaking of which…”

“Oh, no,” he groaned, and she knew he understood where the conversation was going.

“Have you watched it yet?”

“Abby…”

“Hey, I’m reading Wuthering Heights,” she said, realizing that if Marcus hadn’t recommended it to her she would have been quite content to leave it gathering dust on their family bookshelf. She had no idea how they owned the book – she’d certainly never read it, and doubted very much that Clarke had picked it up. Which left only Jake. And she could see Jake turning those pages, smiling at the vivid imagery of the foggy moor and empathizing with the tragedy of Catherine and Heathcliff.

But that wasn’t something she needed to mention to Marcus. Not right now, at least. It was a lovely feeling, though, to gain something from her past while building her future with him.

“The least you can do is indulge me a little, Kane,” she said.

“It’s three hours long! I don’t even know when I’ll have time-“

Abby rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to watch it all at once. Watch it hour-by-hour. Or in six half-hours.”

She sensed there was a reason he hadn’t seen it when it came out, and wondered if it had anything to do with his allergy to the romance genre in general. But for all his reluctance to watch Titanic, there were a few parallels between it and Wuthering Heights. While Rose and Jack were far more modern than their Victorian counterparts, there was still that aura of forbidden love; a soulmate relationship doomed to end in agony. Shouldn’t the English professor in him appreciate that?

“Or we could watch it together,” he offered, raising his eyebrows, hope hiding in his brown eyes. While she adored the idea of curling up on the couch and watching her favorite movie together, sipping wine while his fingers idly combed through her hair, she wasn’t going to do all the work here.

“Marcus,” she said, tilting her head and using her ‘teacher voice.’ “I’m reading _Wuthering. Heights_.”

“Okay,” he sighed, seeming to bend to her will as a sheepish grin crept over his lips. He was outmatched by her determination, and he knew it. “I’ll watch it, if it means that much to you. But it could have been something we could do next weekend.”

 _Next weekend._ Because next weekend would be his first trip back to Polis since he’d relocated. It would be the first time she could hold him in a month, the first time she could brush her lips against his, the first time she could feel his heart beating as she lay her head against his chest. Even just the thought of being with him again – and not _being with him_ , not in that way – was enough to send a rush of electric excitement coursing through her veins.

She was doing her absolute best to adjust to life without Marcus Kane, but sometimes life without Marcus Kane felt like being punched in the chest. Repeatedly.

It felt like going under anesthetic and never quite waking up, continually living in those first five minutes after regaining consciousness. Everything was still there, everything was okay, but the world seemed off. Tainted. A little broken.

And when she looked across the hallway at where he used to teach, where his velvety voice used to emanate from across the polished tile, she found herself almost wondering if a simple nap would put everything back to the way it should be. If she lay her head down on her desk for an hour or so, would she be able to look across the hall and see him smiling at her?

But such thoughts were meaningless fantasy, a reality in which she wouldn’t allow herself to live. He was at Trikru and she was here. It was nothing she could wake up from, but it was nothing she couldn’t live with. They were making it work as best they could, and she was doing everything in her power to stitch the hole he’d torn in her heart when he packed his things and headed across the sprawling miles.

If she told him that, he’d only blame himself, take responsibility for what happened even more than he already did. She even tried not to say ‘I miss you’ more than a few times per week, because she knew what demons it would stir in the back of his moral, self-deprecating head. Abby gladly accepted every ounce of responsibility, embraced it with a heavy heart, but she knew he’d never let her hold that weight by herself. So she didn’t tell him she carried it.

“I think we’ll have _plenty_ of things to do next weekend,” she said in a low voice, giving him a wink that made his cheeks flush. “Things I’ve been thinking about for _weeks_. Did I tell you I went shopping at the mall in Polis the other day?”

Marcus looked confused.

“What for?”

Abby stared at him with the smallest of smirks, waiting for his brain to catch up to their conversation. After a few moments of intense eye contact it clicked, and he made a sound that fell somewhere between acknowledged understanding and a yearning whimper. Apparently, this separation was playing hell with them both.

“If we do this again, maybe I could give you a preview,” she murmured, barely loud enough for the sound to translate over the miles. “Something to tide you over until next Friday.”

He smiled, flustered, looked away for a moment as he thought of something with which to respond. And it almost felt like before, it almost felt like those times when she would wander into his room and kiss him between periods, it almost felt like coming up for air after their separation had forced her below water. Almost.

“ _Mom_!” she heard a voice splutter from across the kitchen, affronted and mortified. _Oh, God._

How long had Clarke been listening? There was nothing she'd said that her daughter couldn’t hear…well, except for that last part. 

On the other side of the screen, Marcus snapped to attention.

“Is that Clarke?” he asked, the nature of his smile changing from flustered to genuinely excited. She knew how much he respected her daughter – both for her academic prowess and her natural knack for leadership – and although they didn’t talk often, their conversations were meaningful.

“She, um…” Abby trailed off, a little embarrassed that her daughter had heard her innuendo. “She says hi.”

Her internet companion blushed even redder, arriving at the right conclusion as to the cause of Abby’s sudden change in demeanor. Clarke Griffin had witnessed much worse when it came to their relationship, but for some reason it didn’t get any easier to get caught.

“Hello, Clarke,” Marcus said, his smile warm and bright. Hearing his voice, Clarke made her way across the room to squat down into Marcus’ frame of vision.

“I wish you’d come back,” she said. “Bryne isn’t as good of a teacher as you were.”

“So I’ve heard,” Marcus said, pushing his glasses up his nose a fraction. “She’s pretty strict?”

“It’s awful,” Clarke said. “I don’t understand her. I followed the directions on the rubric _to the letter_ and-“

“Clarke,” Marcus interjected, his tone comforting. “I understand your worry for your grade, but what really matters is your score on the test in the spring. Byrne can grade your work however she likes, but she won’t be scoring your exam.”

Abby watched as her daughter nodded, enraptured by her ex-teacher’s knowledge. Not for the first time, she wished he’d never left. As much for her own personal reasons as for the kids who adored him, if reluctantly. It was no secret that AP Government and Classic Literature weren’t the same since he left, and there was a kind of resolute sadness that permeated the mood of his room now. The kids knew he was gone, but they didn’t know what to do about it. How to feel about it. But their expressions, the emptiness in their eyes as they left the room, spoke volumes.

“If you’d like, I can take a look at your paper and let you know if I think you’re grasping the material?” Marcus volunteered, and Clarke beamed.

“That would be great,” she said. “Thank you so much, Mr. Kane.”

He gave Clarke his new email address and instructed her to send it there. He warned her that he didn’t have a ton of free time, but he promised to return it to her as soon as he could.

“And Clarke?” he said as she stood to leave, withdrawing her hand from Abby’s shoulder. He took a quick glance at Abby, as if wondering what she would tell him to say, gauging her potential reactions. Apparently he didn’t come up with anything too egregious, because he proceeded. “You can call me Marcus. As long as it’s okay with your mother.”

Abby covered her mouth, felt the dull sting of her teeth against her lower lip as she bit down to keep it stationary. It was a subtle tightrope that Marcus and Clarke would have walked, had he been able to stay. Because she wouldn’t have just been his pupil; she would have been the daughter of the woman he was dating, his potential step-daughter (as the administration would have seen it. Abby was trying not to think that far ahead yet). The potential for favoritism would have been palpable, and it was likely Jaha would have moved her out of his class.

Marcus must have known that. On some level, he would have understood that any relationship with her would have meant losing Clarke, one of his favorite students. But somehow everything had worked out in the end, been solved by falling even farther down the rabbit hole; here he was, talking to her through a computer screen about her government essay and insisting that she call him ‘Marcus.’ He wasn’t just her teacher, or the man her mother was dating. He was both.

After a moment of silence her lip stopped trembling, and she blinked to keep tears from crowding her vision. Marcus was looking at her questioningly, as if wondering whether he’d overstepped his bounds.

He hadn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“That’s fine with me,” Abby said, hoping she didn’t sound monotone in her effort to keep her voice steady. “It’s your name, Marcus. Use it however you want.”

Clarke gave him a shaky smile: it was apparent that his request had caught her off-guard. “Okay, Ka-Marcus,” she said, catching herself. “It’s going to take me a while to get used to that.”

Marcus laughed. “I know,” he admitted. “I don’t ask many of my students to call me by my first name. Take all the time you need, Clarke.”

Abby felt that familiar swell of emotion in her chest, looked away just long enough to allow it to deflate. When she turned back to the man on the other end, he and Clarke had said their goodnights.

“I can get started on the dishes,” Clarke volunteered, her somber tone betraying an obvious dislike for household chores. That said, Abby knew she’d put her needs above her homework if the occasion merited it.

But a quick glance at the upper right corner of her screen told her they’d been talking for over an hour, and it was time to come back to the real world. The world where there was a pile of dishes soaking in a bath of ice-cold dishwater, the world where Marcus was six hours away and Thelonious displayed an uncomfortable lack of ability to leave her the hell alone.

To put things in her students’ words, the real world _sucked_.

“I should probably get going, too,” Abby said, resigned. “The dishes aren’t going to wash themselves. Unfortunately.”

She didn’t think she imagined the weight that hung from his words, the dulled sparkle in his amber eyes.

“I have a few essays to finish grading, too,” he said. “So you do your dishes, and I’ll finish up with this.”

He grabbed a stack of paper thick enough that his hands barely fit around it, held it up like a trophy. Abby couldn't suppress a laugh; of the two of them, he certainly had the worse Thursday night. But she knew what he was doing, hiding his sadness beneath a smile.

This was the part they both hated: the saying goodbye. It had been hard enough to let go of him when he was only an hour away, but it chipped away a tiny piece of her heart every time she hung up the phone.

“Hey,” Abby said in a whisper, after scanning the kitchen for Clarke and finding her nowhere within earshot. “If _you_ don’t have any big Friday night plans-“

“I don’t,” Marcus interrupted her, lowering his voice accordingly. “I suspect my Thursday night plans are going to be my Friday night plans. And my Saturday night plans and Sunday night plans, too.”

Abby gave him a sympathetic smile – apparently there was more grading at the college level than high school. Or at least, the grading was more involved. Part of her couldn’t help feeling bad for him, giving in to the guilt that still stirred in the back of her heart. As much as he said he loved his new job, she knew he’d left a part of his soul in the halls of Arkadia. Which was fitting, she thought, because he’d taken part of hers to Trikru. Between the two of them, they were whole again.

But that didn’t deter her from saying what she had in mind. Pushing her doubts and guilt to the back of her mind, she kept talking and turned her brain off.

“I can FaceTime you again tomorrow around the same time,” she said, dropping her voice low, unable to wipe the seductive smirk off her face. “From the apartment. On our couch. Where we can finish that discussion we were having before.”

She winked, hoping she wouldn’t have to explain this to him further when her daughter was probably lurking nearby. Thankfully, her gesture appeared to serve its purpose. Apparently lost for words, all Marcus could do was nod.

“Goodnight, Marcus,” she said, already looking forward to the next time she’d see him.

“Goodnight, Abby.”

As she pressed the red button to end the call, Abby’s sadness was cut short by the shrill sound of metal scraping metal. When she turned to locate the source of the noise she was relieved to find it was only Clarke, having materialized out of thin air to begin working on those pesky dishes.

“Have I said I’m _really_ thankful the Student Council retreat is this weekend?” she said solemnly. “Now that I know what you’re going to be doing tomorrow night.”

Abby realized she must have heard every word she and Marcus had said, for the second time in less than ten minutes. _Shit._ She didn’t have to do the logical gymnastics anymore, walk the politically correct tightrope on which she’d had to balance when her daughter was younger. But in some ways that made everything all the more difficult; at least back then, there had been a game plan. A rulebook. Now that Clarke was old enough to understand what was happening, the confusion was replaced with a stifling sense of awkwardness that would take hours to filter out of the air between them.

In fact, Abby almost wondered who was more embarrassed in this situation: her daughter, or she herself. She rested her arm on the back of the chair, trying to get in a comfortable position. At least her body could be relaxed while her mind spun and ached.

“Clarke, I didn’t mean to-“ Abby started, but much to her surprise her daughter gave a short, breathy laugh that was more of an exhale than an indication of anything she found humorous.

“At least now I know what’s in those Victoria’s Secret bags,” she said. “I thought it was yoga pants. Guess I was wrong.”

Then Abby laughed too, unable to find the sheer absurdity of their situation anything but comical. Wasn’t the daughter usually the one trying to hide bags of lingerie from her mom? How had their roles gotten so reversed? The way things were going, she half-expected Clarke to tell her to be home by midnight tomorrow.

“That’s a great idea!” Clarke exclaimed seemingly out of nowhere, and Abby frowned as she rose from her chair to help her with the chores.

“What’s a great idea?” she asked, arriving at her daughter’s side just before she answered. Her blue eyes glittered with excitement unbidden, and Abby hoped this was something she felt comfortable sharing. It wasn’t often that she saw Clarke so weightless, so carefree. Although their lives often felt as though they were intertwined loosely at best – and quite honestly, that was the way things had been since Jake – she’d noticed that they’d become closer since Marcus started hanging around.

“Raven said you should go visit him,” Clarke said as she set her phone down on a dry part of the counter, her grin bright enough to set the kitchen aglow, outshining the moonlight on the snow. “You could leave tomorrow after school.”

 _Go visit him?_ It was useless to pretend her stomach wasn’t doing somersaults at the thought of seeing him again, of having him in her arms after a month of phone conversations and love letters and sleeping in his shirts. Not to mention that he now worked for her alma mater. It would be an interesting trip back to the place where she’d earned her undergraduate degree, to see if time had changed the brick buildings and concrete sidewalks or left them alone in its haste to waste the world.

Her heart screamed for her to respond exactly as Clarke had – to go all in, just this once – but her head had some reservations. There was no way in hell she was doing this without him knowing about it. This wasn’t a matter of trust or suspicion: it was a matter of common courtesy.

“I’d have to check with him first,” she said. “Make sure he’s okay with it.”

Clarke stared at her as if she’d spoken complete gibberish, and Abby wondered just how much time her daughter had spent with Raven over her break. That expression was practically ripped from the Raven Reyes textbook on “how to give authority figures attitude.”

“You’re kidding,” Clarke said. “Mom, he’s dying to see you. Even I can tell that.”

Abby looked down at the tan tile and braided rug beneath their feet, brushed a strand of hair behind her ear as she contemplated Clarke’s words. _Dying to see you._ She probably wasn’t wrong. If Marcus was feeling even half of what she was, every day without her was its own kind of heartless torture – a pain to which they’d numbed themselves, but an ache that never fully subsided. It would be like heaven, she thought, to have a few days without it.

“He said he wasn’t busy,” Clarke added for good measure, looking at her phone as Abby began scrubbing a few plates. “What is there to ask him about? You know he’d say yes.”

“School gets out at 3 o’clock,” Abby said. “I’d have to wait for the traffic to clear, which would put me on the road at 3:30. By the time I get to Trikru, it would already be at least 9:30…not to mention I’d need to make reservations at a hotel…”

The Raven glare, again.

“Mom,” Clarke deadpanned. “I don’t think you’d be staying in a hotel.”

And that was the closest her daughter would ever come to acknowledging that she had slept with Marcus Kane.

Her phone buzzed, and Clarke glanced down at it again. “Raven says-“ she stopped abruptly, her cheeks slightly red. “Actually, never mind. That’s not important. She just thinks you guys would have a good time.”

Oh, Abby could imagine what Raven said. _Tell your mom to go fuck his brains out. Tell your mom she needed to get laid, yesterday._

“And now I’m living my life by what Raven thinks?” Abby said, knowing that this was her last line of defense. Her heart was slowly winning the battle over her brain, and it would take one good blow for it to win the war. Because her brain was slowly defecting, deserting. She couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d looked in that black t-shirt tonight, how he made those reading glasses look attractive and charming, the way his eyes had widened at her suggestion of FaceTiming him again tomorrow.

“For the record, I think it’s a good idea too,” Clarke said. “The way I see it you can spend your weekend here grading papers by yourself, or you can go and be with someone you-“

Abby stared at Clarke.

Clarke stared at Abby.

Her sentence froze in the air, suspended between them, waiting for that one little word they knew was never coming out. That one four-letter word that she hadn’t even said to him yet – she’d thought it, sure, she’d thought it a few times – but this was the closest it had ever come to escaping into the concrete realm of reality.

And it hadn’t even been from her mouth. It had been from her daughter’s.

If that were true, if she really loved him, wasn’t love about taking risks? Chances? Marrying Jake so young had been one of the biggest chances she’d ever taken, if not the biggest. Things could have crashed and burned spectacularly, and multiple members of her circle of friends and family had taken it upon themselves to warn her of that fact. That they were taking too big of a chance, that they should just wait until they were older. That taking this leap could prove too far of a jump for them to land.

But they hadn’t just jumped: they’d soared.

And in comparison, what was one little six-hour drive? He told her he wasn’t doing anything that night. She knew he didn’t go to bed until at least 11 o’clock, because that was when the goodnight text usually came. Even if she only spent one waking hour with him and the night that followed, it would be a feast compared to the starvation diet Jaha had forced them both to go on.

“I’m going to have to finish the last part of that book tonight, then,” Abby sighed in fake resignation, and Clarke cheered. “And I’m going to have to pack something to wear on Saturday.”

“I’ll help you pack,” Clarke offered, darting from the kitchen to find a suitcase. “And mom?”

Abby had already submerged her hands in the dishwater again, desperate to finish the task at hand so she could move on to preparations for the next one. But she turned to her daughter as best as she could, equipped with a smile and a full heart.

“What, honey?” she asked, taking a deep breath and swallowing hard. She knew Clarke approved of her and Marcus, she knew their relationship wasn’t bothering her, but she always prepared herself to have to have that talk. To explain that Marcus would never replace her dad. To explain that just because she loved him, it didn’t mean she loved Jake any less. But those were things, she realized, that Clarke already knew. She didn’t have to have a verbal confirmation of her daughter’s understanding: by helping her surprise him for a weekend away, she had said more than words ever could.

Sometimes Abby forgot her little girl wasn’t such a little girl anymore.

“Heathcliff dies and is buried next to Catherine,” Clarke said, and it took Abby a few moments to realize she was talking about the book. Giving her the ending, so she wouldn’t have to bother with over a hundred pages tonight.

“And Cathy and Hareton get married?” Abby guessed, and Clarke’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline as she leaned over the wooden railing that led to their rooms.

“How did you know?” she asked, shocked.

Abby shrugged, turning back to the saucepan with a tiny smile. A knowing smile. Her prediction of the ending hadn’t been entirely guesswork, but she wouldn’t tell her daughter that.

So instead she said, “I had a feeling they wouldn’t be able to hate each other for long.”


	19. Of Lunch Conversations and Six Hour Drives

The entirety of Abby Griffin’s workday was measured in the ticking of the clock on her classroom’s wall, the seconds that spanned hours and minutes that spanned years. It seemed no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to focus on the tasks at hand; teaching her students melted into thoughts of driving down the open road, listening to music and feeling the weight lift off

While the majority of her students weren’t incredibly perceptive to her distracted state, she couldn’t fool Callie; lunch became less of a conversation and more of a confrontation.

“Abby, what’s going on?” she asked between bites of strawberry yogurt, her dark eyes betraying a deep concern. While Callie hadn’t known the extent to which Abby and Marcus were involved – she didn’t know about the night of the snowstorm or little things, like the trip to the grocery store – she knew that they were together, and knew enough to know her friend was suffering in his absence.

“It’s nothing,” Abby said. Her attempt to brush the topic away backfired, and it came back to slap her in the face moments later.

“It’s not nothing,” Callie said, her tone insistent. “It has to do with Kane, doesn’t it?”

Abby sighed. “Okay, I’ll give you that. It has to do with Marcus.”

To her surprise, Callie gave her a small, almost gleeful smile.

“What?” Abby asked, confused at the gesture.

“I just can’t believe how everything between you two changed,” Callie said, and even Abby couldn’t hold back a smile at her acknowledgement. “Now you call him ‘Marcus,’ but you guys couldn’t stand each other for _months_. Now look where you are.” She shook her head, closed her eyes for a moment as if basking in the unreal quality of it all. “If someone had told me six months ago that you and Marcus Kane would be dating, I would have slapped them.”

Abby laughed. “So would I.”

Callie’s phone buzzed, and she looked down to check it. Abby continued eating her salad, placing forkfuls of food into her mouth even though every bite tasted like ash. She was too excited about tonight – and a little nervous, although she had no reason to be – and the constant whir of emotion had dulled her senses, turned down the dial on anything that wasn’t her racing heart and heightened nerves.

“Okay, where were we?” Callie said, brushing a strand of black hair out of her eyes. Abby had every intention of injecting a new topic of conversation, but her friend continued before she could so much as part her lips. “Why you’re acting so strange today, and what it has to do with Kane.”

Abby cringed, wished her phone would ring so she could avoid this altogether. It wasn’t that she was afraid to tell Callie, or worried that her friend would tell her to call off the expedition to Trikru. But there was something sweet and intimate about this just the way it was, with just her and Clarke knowing about it. It was a secret shared between mother and daughter, and Abby felt almost traitorous at the thought of letting it out to Callie Cartwig.

But the more she thought about it, used what little of her brain remained for general use and wasn’t devoted entirely to the thought of seeing Marcus later that night, she realized there wasn’t much of a way around it. She could lie and say she just missed him, but Callie would fire back and assert that she wasn’t acting like a woman who missed her boyfriend. Not today, at least.

Seeing no way out of the maze, she decided to follow the path and see where it led.

“You got me,” Abby said, rolling her eyes as her companion grinned. “I’m going to visit him tonight as a surprise. He doesn’t know I’m coming.”

“Oh, my God!” Callie exclaimed, practically falling off her chair in surprise. “That’s adorable. You haven’t seen each other since he left?”

Abby shook her head.

“Wow. That’s rough, honey. I’m sorry. But at least you’ll get to see him tonight. I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed to see you.”

Acknowledging her truth with a simple nod, Abby decided to change the subject before it delved too far into the gaping hole Marcus’ absence had left in her heart.

“Well, it’s nothing I can’t handle,” she said. “And you know all about it too, with Tara. Being that far from her must be awful.”

Callie’s expression morphed into a beaming, radiant smile, and Abby began to wonder what her friend hadn’t told _her_.

“Callie?” Abby asked, her name turning into a question. Without prompting, Callie explained.

“Well…Tara’s moving in with me next month,” Callie said, excitement forcing her words to tumble out in a rapid avalanche. “Her company transferred her to Polis, so she’s going to be living with me and working in the city.”

Abby nearly dropped her fork, equally shocked and relieved. She always assumed Callie would be the one to leave to be with Tara – while Callie enjoyed teaching, her first love would always be art. It had always been her dream to pursue a career in graphic design or to open an art gallery, and on Tara’s salary she could likely afford to do it. But Abby hadn’t realized that salary could move closer, that there was even a branch of her company in Polis.

“That’s great!” she exclaimed, hoping she didn’t sound petty. True, there was a tiny pang of jealousy that wormed its way through her core; why couldn’t Marcus move closer? Callie was going to have the thing that Abby had had for a month of pure bliss – the ability to spend the majority of her time with one of the people she cared for most in the world, a person she loved. For now at least, she and Marcus had had that opportunity taken from them.

But she was truly happy for Callie. She would have relocated in a heartbeat if it were necessary for her to move, if Tara needed her, but thankfully that wasn’t the way things had worked out. The predominant emotion Abby felt was relief – she couldn’t endure losing Marcus and Callie in the same month.

If they were moving in together, did that mean…

“Are you going to…” Abby trailed off, her sentence ending in a vague, unresolved shrug of her shoulders. She didn’t want to be too direct, didn’t want to put her friend on the spot, but she knew how Callie felt about Tara. Marriage had been on the table for a while, and now that they were moving in together it almost seemed as though it could finally be served.

For her part, Callie didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. “I’ve had a ring for a while,” she said, the color in her cheeks remaining constant, her voice steady. “But it was something I wanted to do in person, not over a phone call. So eventually, I think it’s going to happen. I’m going to give her some time to adjust, though.”

A smile formed, this one made of genuine happiness.

“I’m sure she’ll adapt quickly,” Abby said, drawing a flicker of a grin from her best friend.

“I can’t believe how well it worked out,” Callie admitted. She took a sip of water, refocused her attention on Abby. “And I’m sure things will work out for you and Kane, too. Even before you told me about it, I knew there was something going on between you two.”

Abby frowned, the corners of her lips quirking upward in a bemused smile. This was an assertion she hadn’t heard before – she’d always assumed Callie wouldn’t have guessed about their relationship unless Abby explicitly brought her into the loop. Not that her friend wasn’t perceptive, but she had other things going on in her life. Whatever existed between she and Marcus, Abby thought, was the least of Callie Cartwig’s concerns.

“How?” Abby asked, her lunch forgotten.

“It was obvious,” Callie said. “The way he looked at you…it’s the same way Tara looks at me. That was before the rumors, by the way. I think that started back in November.”

 _The same way Tara looks at me._ Could Marcus have been in love with her before the alcohol-soaked storm? Not that it mattered now – they were together, there was no doubt in her mind as to how he felt – but the thought sent an electric thrill coursing through her. Had she been looking at him the same way? Had they both masked their emotions with hatred, afraid to pull off the disguise and reveal what lay beneath?

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Abby asked. If it had been so obvious that Marcus Kane had feelings for her, why hadn’t Callie let her know? If there was even a chance she could have spent more time with him, that they could have begun things sooner, Abby wished they could have taken it. It seemed like something she should have been aware of, although…

“Abby, are you kidding me?” Callie laughed, raising her eyebrows in a gesture of teasing skepticism. “You hated him. If I told you what I noticed, you would’ve smacked him. And he would’ve denied it meant anything, threatened to go to Jaha. Don’t try to tell me that you would have walked into his room and kissed him if I let you know. That was something you guys had to figure out on your own, and I had to let you.”

Abby looked away, focused her gaze on her dark phone screen. She almost expected him to text her – lunch texts were infrequent, because he didn’t hold office hours every day and sometimes her lunch overlapped with one of the Humanities classes he taught – but when they happened, she was thankful for them. And if he happened to rescue her from the conversation at hand, well, that was just an added bonus.

“My point is,” Callie continued, “just because you guys are doing long-distance doesn’t mean he’d look at you any differently. If he loved you when he hated you, he loves you even more now. That’s a powerful thing, hon.”

Her phone screen lit up, glowing against the brick backdrop of the break room, and Callie smirked.

“See?”

Abby flushed crimson, remembering how their passionate arguments and heated disagreements had morphed into something…physical. But it had never been just about physicality, about seeking comfort in each other’s bodies; there had always been some extent of emotion, an understanding she lost without Jake and found with him.

Ignoring Callie’s observation, Abby picked up her phone and read the message. It was, of course, from Marcus.

**_How’s your Friday going?_ **

She smiled, fingers soaring across the digitized keyboard.

**_ Good enough. Can’t wait for the day to be over. _ **

With a quiet _clunk_ she set her phone back down on the table, redirected her attention to her friend. But the bell rang before they could utter another word, and the women found their discussion time drawing to a close.

“I’m really happy everything worked out for you and Tara,” Abby said, feeling a need to emphasize her feelings toward the news – and to redirect their last words to a route that led them miles away from Marcus. “You guys deserve to be happy after being apart for so long.”

“Thank you,” Callie said, her dark brown eyes sparkling with contentment. “We made it work, but it’ll be nice to not have to deal with the different time zones anymore. At least you and Kane don’t have to worry about that.”

“True,” Abby admitted. _I guess it’s not all bad._

She stood to leave, tossed the few remaining leaves of her salad and a couple of orange slices in the garbage. Just as she began to move through the doorway and back to her classroom, Callie stopped her with a firm hand on her shoulder.

“Hey,” she said, giving her a gentle, comforting squeeze. “If Tara and I could make it, you guys can, too. Going to see him tonight will be good for you both. I can tell how much you miss him, and I _know_ he misses you. You need to see each other again before one of you spontaneously combusts.”

Abby gave a dry laugh, lingered in the doorway under her friend’s feather-light touch.

“How do you know what he’s thinking?” Abby asked, wondering when her best friend had earned a degree in Kane Studies. Slowly withdrawing her hand, Callie just smiled.

“For a complete asshole, he was always a bit of a hopeless romantic.”

 

***

 

The final bell rang, announcing her freedom with a shrill vibration through tinny speakers, and Abby Griffin sprang into action.

She bid her class a good weekend – well, half her class, anyway, the other half had vacated the premises from the first second the bell had sounded – and began cramming papers and utensils into her work bag. The quizzes she’d given her kids took up more space than she thought, and she very nearly had to sacrifice her laptop pouch for extra room. Thankfully, the whole thing fit. If barely.

With a smirk, she realized she and Marcus could compare paper stacks. _I have more to grade than you,_ she’d say, slamming the pile down on his table. And he’d laugh, bring out what remained of that stack from their FaceTime, insist that his was more involved because they were essays. They’d banter for a bit over who really had more work to do, whose class was really more difficult; an argument they’d had before they’d so much as kissed, albeit under different circumstances.

And eventually Abby would decide he was almost unbearably sexy when he got all flustered defending whatever play they were reading, and she’d decide to make him lose that smug smirk of his in one way or another. So she’d get up and walk over to his side of the table, sit down on his lap with her legs spread apart, straddling him, and show him just how useful a knowledge of human anatomy could be.

 _Try doing_ that _with just your knowledge of Victorian literature, Marcus._

So lost was she in her fantasy, she didn’t notice she had a visitor until they were standing directly in front of her, repeating her name with an annoyed edge.

“Mrs. Griffin? _Mrs. Griffin_?”

And her illusion shattered like broken glass, replaced with a dull pang of regret. If she’d gotten out of there right away instead of losing herself in what could be, she could be on her way to him right now. But now she was looking into the curious – if exasperated – blue eyes of Octavia Blake, her frayed backpack slung over her leather-clad shoulder.

“Yes, Octavia?” Abby asked, taking a cursory glance at the clock. 3:35. Well, the traffic was always bad when she tried to leave school when the kids left. This might work out for the best. And she needed to put his address in her phone anyway: she might have gone to school at Trikru, but she sure as hell couldn’t navigate there from a twenty-year-old memory. This might be a blessing in disguise.

“Can I close the door?” Octavia asked. “There’s something I want to talk to you about, but-“

“That’s fine,” Abby interrupted, starting to sense that this wouldn’t be a short conversation. Of course she wanted to help Octavia with whatever was going on – as a teacher, that was her job – but why, why did she decide she needed help with it tonight? Tonight, of all nights?

Octavia strode over to the wooden door and pulled it closed with a click, muting the footsteps and muted conversations of a student body eager for the weekend to begin. She made her way back to her Anatomy teacher, straight-faced and determined, sitting down on top of the desk in the middle of the classroom and brushing a raven braid out of her eyes. From her position behind her desk, she and Octavia were across from each other with only the black-painted wooden surface between them.

“What would you like to talk to me about?” Abby asked, her brain churning out a few different scenarios. All appeared equally likely. It could be her grade on the first exam, on which she scored a C. It could be her lab report, of which Abby had yet to receive a corrected copy. It could be the massive string of tardies she’d amassed, a historic feat that would land her in at least six detentions before the year drew to a close. With Octavia Blake, unpredictability was truly the only constant.

“I know why Kane got fired,” the girl said simply, swinging her left leg back and forth as it dangled off the side of the desk, and Abby inhaled sharply. _How the hell does she…?_

Bellamy. It had to be Bellamy. Clarke had warned her that the Blake siblings rarely kept secrets from each other, but just this once she thought she could depend on the eldest to use some discretion. If Octavia knew, there was no telling who else might have been informed. Had she told Jasper? Miller? Monty?

Did they only know about the videotape, or had they somehow figured out the tangled mess that composed Jaha’s unwelcome feelings for her? Octavia didn’t apply herself, but she wasn’t an idiot. If she’d seen Jaha going to her room after school – as he had since Marcus had left, much to Abby’s chagrin – she could solve for the unknown variable.

There was, Abby realized, only one way to emerge from this hell unscathed: to go deeper into it.

“What do you know?” she asked, leaning forward against her desk and resting on her forearms.

“I know the rumors are true about you guys getting drunk together last month,” she said, and Abby cursed herself for ever letting Bellamy Blake get involved in her personal life. She should have kept things to Clarke, Lexa, and maybe Luna if the need had arose. At least the girls wouldn’t have told a secret that it had been made clear needed to be kept.

“And I know there’s a tape of you guys doing it,” Octavia added. After a few moments of consideration, she amended her statement to, “getting drunk, I mean. Although I know the part about you guys hooking up on Miller’s dad’s couch is true, too. Congrats on that, by the way.”

“We didn’t ‘hook up!’” Abby snapped, her composure fracturing.

Octavia grinned, and too late Abby realized she’d given the girl exactly what she was looking for: confirmation. An affirmation of the rumors she’d heard, a disapproval of the fantastical outlying statements. Who knew if Bellamy had even talked to her, or if she’d figured out a way to make her break on her own?

Stomach sinking, Abby decided it was time to get to the point.

“Is that all you wanted, Octavia?” she asked, not bothering to keep her voice gentle. “To know if the rumors were true?”

To Abby’s surprise, the girl shook her head.

“That’s not why I’m here,” she said. “If I wanted to do that, I could have Monty hack the security system. He’s done it before.”

Abby decided to ignore the dubious legality of that statement, considering the dubious legality of drinking on school property as an employee of said school.

“Then what were you going to talk to me about?” Abby repeated, exasperated. She could be on the road right now, driving to Trikru with the radio on and a heart full of hope. Instead she was trapped in a prison of their past misdeeds, shacked to a past she never fully shook off. “If this can wait until Monday, I really need to-“

“It can’t wait until Monday,” Octavia interrupted. She pulled both legs up onto the desk, sitting in a cross-legged position as she stared at Abby from several feet away. “Because Jasper and Monty and I want to help you. The sooner, the better.”

For the second time in under fifteen minutes, Abby Griffin was speechless.

Help her? Help her with _what_? Unless they could go back in time and knock that bottle of alcohol from her hands, succeed where Marcus had failed, there was nothing they could do. Unless…

They couldn’t go back in time, but they could do the next best thing.

They could _erase it_.

Abby stood up straight, walked over to Octavia to stand in front of her. This was so, so, so wrong. The logical part of her was screaming, begging her to tell Bellamy Blake’s sophomore sister to go home and forget about what she knew. That it was better for both of them if they just got on with their lives and left the past in the past, where it belonged.

But that was the problem. The past wasn’t staying in the past.

“What are you suggesting?” Abby asked, keeping her voice low although she knew no one was listening.

“Monty knows how to wipe footage,” she said, matching Abby’s quiet tone. “He's done it before. Jasper’s been talking to Raven, and she told him how to break in to Jaha’s office. Between the four of us, we can erase that night from existence.”

There was a hidden undertone in that statement, a phrase Octavia was saying with her eyes and not her lips. But Abby heard it as clearly as if she’d added it on, a fourth sentence at the end of her explanation.

_Then Kane can come back._

They weren’t just grasping at straws here – they were reaching for a single straw in a landslide, sorting through stacks and stacks of hay to find a needle that might or might not actually exist. But if he could come back…if there was the tiniest chance that they could put Marcus back where he belonged in his place across the hallway, shouldn’t they take it?

It was a massive, unwieldy risk. One that could very well shatter Jaha’s emotion-laced good will and finally get her fired. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, if not for Alie. The more Abby learned about her, the more she gleaned from newscasts and articles on local webpages, the more important it seemed she was.

The City of Light was a corporation attempting to “make life better” for Arkadia by…hell, Abby had no idea how they were making things better, but it was clear that they were influential and wealthy and Alie was at the head of it all. If she and Octavia weren’t careful, the kids could end up expelled and Abby could end up having to relocate hundreds of miles away to find another job. And she didn’t have an Indra willing to bend over backwards to atone for a decades-old debt.

But wasn’t that what love was about? Taking risks?

They regarded each other in silence for a moment, blue eyes meeting brown, determination colliding with ferocity. In that moment, she realized they were thinking the same thing. They wanted the same thing. For whatever reason, Octavia Blake had an emotional, vested interest in Marcus Kane and his relationship with her. She wanted to help make things better, to keep them together despite Jaha’s interference.

Maybe, Abby thought, she should let her. As long as she had a say in whatever the kids were doing.

“Okay,” Abby said, her words an echo of a whisper. Octavia grinned, but Abby held up a hand to pause her celebration. “Come back to me on Monday with a concrete plan, and we can go from there. I’m not going to let you do this without knowing what you’re doing first.”

Octavia rolled her eyes.

“Mrs. Griffin, we’ve never gotten caught. We’re the best at what we do. Trust me.”

Abby couldn’t help but admire her tenacity, the blazing fire behind her oceanic gaze. Where Bellamy was thunder – quiet, rolling – his sister was lighting. Bold, bright, and almost…deadly. When she wanted something, she made sure it happened: she had just never wanted an A in Abby's class.

“It’s not you I don’t trust,” Abby said, images of Thelonious Jaha surfacing in her mind’s eye. If things went wrong, Octavia could be forever impacted.

So Abby had to make sure things didn’t go wrong.

“Like I said,” Abby repeated. “Take the weekend to get something solid planned. Talk to Jasper and Monty and Raven. This isn’t something you should be taking lightly.”

The girl shook her head, strands of dark braids flying from side to side.

“We’re not,” she said. “We’re just trying to help.”

The obvious question, the question Abby felt like asking, was a word long and a paragraph in explanation. _Why?_

Why did these kids care so much about her and Marcus? Why would they risk expulsion to get them back together again? Or, was it more about Marcus as a teacher than about their status as a couple? Could it be, she wondered, some conglomeration of both?

But she didn’t ask that one-word question. She didn’t have time. It was 3:50, she was running late, and the traffic had cleared. It was time to get going, to find her way back to the other half of her heart that was working as an English professor six hours away.

So instead she settled for two words instead of one, spoken as her companion made her way toward the door.

“Thank you.”

 

***

 

Four hours and a few hundred miles later, Abby Griffin realized she’d vastly overestimated the interestingness of the drive from Arkadia to Trikru. As a girl she hadn’t thought much of it – she was going to school, she was excited to be going to one of the best schools in the country for her chosen career path – and the flatness of the plains and the lack of anything resembling a city felt secondary. Unimportant. But now, as an adult whose heart leapt at every sign that counted down the miles between her and Marcus, the vast expanses of nothing but fields and forests felt drab and exhausting. It was as if some infantile part of her brain had given up all maturity and began chanting, _are we there yet?_

But a more dominant part of her found the resolve to deal with the boredom, to stand tall in the face of her weariness. He was so close, closer with every turn of the wheels and every stalk of wheat she drove past. She could see the glimmer in his amber eyes when he opened the door to the apartment she’d entered into her GPS, feel the radiant warmth of his muscular arms encircling her, the stiff bristliness of his beard against her skin as he pulled her in for a passionate kiss. There was no amount of cornfields or wilderness that could keep her from him, no order from Jaha that could place chains around her heart.

But God, there had to be more interesting routes to travel. Next time, she resolved to take a more scenic route. Even if it involved a few extra minutes of travel, at least they’d be intriguing minutes. The most interesting thing about this drive so far – besides her somewhat-less-than-appropriate imaginings of what she and Marcus would spend the rest of the night doing once she arrived – had been the playlist Clarke made her for the drive.

Abby had the sneaking suspicion that her daughter hadn’t slept last night, instead opting to prepare her mom for the trip on which she was about to embark. Abby had woken up in the morning to Titanic in her workbag (“You and Marcus could watch it this weekend,”) a series of new songs on her phone under a playlist entitled “On the Road,” and a handful of steering-wheel-friendly snacks that she could eat while keeping her eyes on the road. Halfway through her second Chocolate Chip granola bar, Abby decided it was time to investigate her daughter’s musical handiwork.

She took her eyes off the road for split second to press play, waited for the first song to blare through the crackly speakers of their well-loved Toyota. Seconds later, it began.

And from the first note, she felt tears beginning to form.

Clarke may have had a well-documented dislike for her favorite song, but she certainly remembered what it was. There was no way for her to know it now shared a history with Marcus, was laced with off-key notes belted out in a moment of barely-controlled passion and electric adoration, but she knew enough to know it deserved a place of importance on this two-hour long playlist.

“ _And I don’t want the world to see me_ ,” Abby sang softly over a lump in her throat, wishing Marcus were here to accompany her with his warm smile and soulful voice. “ _’Cause I don’t think that they’d understand. When everything’s meant to be broken, I just want you to know who I am_.”

Her voice broke and she swallowed hard, blinked a few times to clear the blurriness from her vision. Maybe she thought, singing wasn’t the greatest of ideas right now. Maybe after, when she was in Marcus’ arms again after a hellacious month of nothing but hearing his voice, she’d be able to sing these words again.

But God, it was so brokenly beautiful.

Halfway through the guitar section the song faded away, replaced by the jingling tune of her ringtone. Her first thought was what her first thought always was: Clarke. Was she on her trip? Had the bus broken down? Did she need her mom to come get her? Although it would feel a bit like ripping her heart from her chest – especially considering she was only an hour away from him now – Abby wouldn’t hesitate to turn around for her daughter. Clarke came first, always. Above anything and everything.

But when she glanced down at her screen, picked up the phone and glanced at the caller’s name, she found it read a name she hadn’t quite expected: Marcus Kane.

 _Shit,_ she thought. He was calling for their promised FaceTime session, she guessed. And as much as she wished she could do that, lay down on their couch in the lacy underthings she’d put on underneath her henley and jeans just to see him squirm, to see his eyes go wide and his lips part, she wasn’t willing to give away her secret just yet. And if she answered and couldn’t FaceTime him, he’d start to get suspicious.

So she let the call go to voicemail, her heart aching. She hated this – not picking up his call – but he’d understand as soon as she knocked on his door. It would all make sense then.

Doing her best to ignore the tiny pangs of regret that coursed the length of her body and the lack of scenery to distract her from those emotions, Abby tried to focus on how close she was to him. At this point she was a little over an hour away, and cheered when she glimpsed a billboard advertising Trikru’s medical program. She was getting closer. What was one more hour after all she’d driven today?

Then her phone rang again – Marcus – and she started to wonder if he was calling for their FaceTime at all. Usually he didn’t keep calling her if she couldn’t pick up. In those scenarios he tended to assume she was busy and sent her a text, let her make the next move so she didn’t feel crowded. She appreciated that about him; he cared, but he didn’t hover.

This, then, was unusual and a little alarming.

Abby picked up the call just before it went to voicemail, raising the phone to her ear and guiding the steering wheel with her left hand.

“Marcus?” she said, trying to keep her voice even. _It might be nothing. Don’t jump to conclusions._

“Abby,” he said, sounding almost… _relieved_? “You didn’t go to the apartment tonight, did you?”

She frowned, biting her lower lip as she decided whether or not the truth was the best course of action in this scenario. She had no desire to lie to him, but to protect her surprise…she was conflicted. Then again, if she couldn’t FaceTime him he’d know she wasn’t there anyway. At this point, she knew there was little she could do to preserve the surprise she’d worked so hard to build.

But why did he care whether or not she was at the apartment? This was irregular for him – to monitor her like this – and she frowned, unsure how to interpret his tone and motives.

“No, I didn’t,” she said, finding words as she went along. “I got stuck at Arkadia.”

Not a lie, strictly speaking. She had been stuck at Arkadia, talking to Octavia. No reason to feel guilty about telling him that.

“Oh,” he said, again sounding as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Are you still there, then? This late?”

Her frown deepened. “No, I’m not there. I’m in the car now. Marcus, what’s going on?”

For nearly ten seconds, quiet. Then, in a resigned, beaten tone, he said the words she never expected to hear.

“Abby, I’m at the apartment. I was going to surprise you.”

She nearly steered the car off the road, her jaw dropping faster than the temperature at nightfall. For a few moments, she almost thought she’d imagined the whole thing – how the hell would they have come up with the same thing at the same time? What were the chances? – but it explained much about why he’d called. Why he’d asked her where she was. Why he’d sounded so relieved when she said she’d gotten stuck at Arkadia.

What an idiot.

What an adorable, perfect _idiot_.

“Dammit, this thing dropped the call again,” she heard him mutter, realized she hadn’t talked for longer than she thought.

“No, I’m still here,” she stammered, uncertain how the hell she was going to explain that she was less than an hour from his home while he was less than an hour from hers.

“Would you rather I didn’t…” he trailed off, sounding a little wounded. "I can go home, if you want me to-"

This hadn’t been the reaction he anticipated, and this hadn’t been the conversation she expected. But regardless, she wanted to see him. She _needed_ to see him.

“No!” she exclaimed, turning her car toward the nearest exit and rerouting to Polis. “No. It’s just…Marcus, I…”

“I’m sorry, Abby,” he apologized, and more than anything she wanted to draw him into her arms and erase whatever confusion was wreaking havoc on him. “I should have checked with you first. I didn’t mean to-“

“Marcus, I’m almost at Trikru,” she blurted, figuring the charade was up. “I was going to surprise _you_.”

They were both quiet for a few moments, sinking in the absurdity of their situation. Then, much to her surprise, she heard a low chuckle from the other end.

“You’re kidding,” he said, his tone infused with a slight humor. “You’re really almost there?”

She stopped at a red light, waited for the signal so she could get back on the freeway and head toward him. The whole thing was so outlandish, she couldn’t keep a laugh from bubbling through her lips, either.

“I just passed a sign for their medical school,” she said, ended her sentence with a light groan. “Marcus, did we really just do this?”

“It seems that way,” he said. “I’d say we should have planned this better, but…”

She grinned, rested her head on the steering wheel for a few seconds before the light went green. “Well, we certainly messed this up. Don’t go anywhere. I’m on my way back to Polis.”

Although she couldn’t see it, she knew he was shaking his head, visualized the brown waves of his hair rolling as he moved his head from side to side. “No. You’re not driving all the way back tonight. It’s not safe.”

Abby rolled her eyes. “Marcus, I’ve had my license for over twenty years. I’ll be okay.”

“Let’s meet halfway,” he suggested softly. “We can spend the night somewhere and figure out what we’re doing after we get some rest.”

Abby thought about the lingerie she was wearing beneath her clothes, lamented that it likely wouldn’t be put to any sort of use tonight now that they’d both be driving over eight hours. _Dammit._

But she’d still get to see him. Marcus. Her Marcus. No matter where they ended up, this night would end with her in his arms and her head against his chest. At the end of the day, that was the only place she ever wanted to be.

“There’s a hotel in Alexandria,” he said. “It’s an equal distance between the two of us. Nothing fancy, but it’ll get us through the night and it’s reviewed well.”

“Sounds good to me,” Abby said, angling her phone so she could type. “Just give me the address and I’ll meet you there.”

He gave her the address and they talked for a little while longer, then mutually decided they needed to focus on the road instead of each other. At least for the time being. And despite the unexpected turn the night had taken, Abby felt her spirits lifting, her heart starting to soar: in two and a half hours, she’d see him. It was really happening, even if it was happening in a way neither of them had in mind.

And as she pulled in to the hotel at almost 11 o’clock next to the car she recognized as the one they’d gone grocery shopping in, the one she’d kissed him in, the one they sang their duet in, she realized none of it mattered. Their plans, their careful decision-making, their sneakiness in trying to be discreet and keep the other person in the dark…it was for naught and yet not at all.

He was here, sitting the car next to her with a bouquet of bright red roses, waiting for her to park with the biggest smile she’d ever seen. He appeared to glow in the bright moonlight, reflected by the white sheen of the snow and the yellowish glare from the parking lot lights, the shadows erasing every line on his face and adding to his youthful aura. She could barely breathe as she put the car in park and practically jumped out the door, her feet colliding with the asphalt in a way that would have made her wince had the strength of her senses not been directed elsewhere.

Exhausted and excited and relieved, Abby stumbled into his arms and clutched him as though her life depended on it. And he held her just as tightly, fingertips running up and down her spine as he brushed his lips against her hair and made her go hot and cold all over. She took a few moments just to breathe him in – to inhale that familiar scent of rainfall and cinnamon and hope – to bury her face in his chest and surrender to the faint sound of his heartbeat through his thick winter coat.

It was all she could do to keep the tears in her eyes from falling.

He was here. He was here, finally, this wasn’t a phone call or a FaceTime session or a text message or a love letter. This was him, her Marcus, the man who completed her as solidly as the last piece of a puzzle even she hadn’t known how to solve.

After a few minutes of simply holding each other, remembering what it felt like to fit to each other like a well-worn glove, Marcus withdrew his right hand from around her and guided it underneath her chin to tilt her gaze toward his.

“Abby,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion as the starlight cast a halo above his head, ran streaks of white-silver through his dark hair. She reached up to place her hands on either side of his head, running her fingers over his skin as if to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, to prove he was real, this was real, she wasn’t going to wake up in her bed at home in his shirt.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered, her words coming out stiff and jarring as she spoke over a lump in her throat. He nodded, understanding, needing no further explanation or elaboration.

And then he guided her lips to his in a gentle, sweet kiss, a passionate collision of lips and tongues and quiet, contented sighs. It was a kiss that was aware of their surroundings – they were in a parking lot outside a hotel and midnight was approaching – but it was also a promise, a reminder that he’d missed her just as much as she’d felt lost without him. Their mouths met again and again and again, breathless, desperate, saying everything through the pressure of skin on skin and moans that translated to words of the highest worship.

They weren’t going to be able to go any farther than this right now, she knew: not until they’d checked in and hauled their things up to whatever rooms might or might not be available. But stopping was so much harder than starting, and the sound he made when her lips grazed the area just above his collarbone was addictive, entrancing.

“Oh, Abby,” he sighed, and she smiled a buoyant smile, a weightless smile, the first since he’d been gone. Her lingerie might get some use tonight after all, she thought, and her grin widened.

Eventually they succumbed to the biting cold and leaned away, still nestled snugly in each other’s arms. And she said those three words without thinking, those words that her daughter and Callie and everyone but them had realized months ago. They spilled out like rain from a thundercloud, unbidden, boundless, free after weeks of being held in the atmosphere of her mind.

“I love you,” she said, watching his eyes widen as the meaning sunk in. He pulled her closer then as his eyes lit with joy and disbelief, pulled her close until she was flush against him, leaned down just enough that she felt his lips brush hers as he spoke.

“I love you, too.”


	20. Of Hotel Rooms and Blue Skies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the rating is M on this fic, but this chapter is *SERIOUSLY* SMUTTY. Quite possibly the smuttiest thing I've ever written. So...make of that what you will. ;)

The room was typical hotel fare. A white comforter, billowy curtains, a carpet whose worn appearance betrayed its history; the thousands of shoes whose owners had trod its surface before them. There was nothing special to be found in the fixtures whose finish had long since worn off and left the wood flat and dull, the flat-screen television several years out of date. The lights flickered every so often with an unpredictable inconsistency, a byproduct of winter in a town with an early bedtime and an iffy power source.

Marcus couldn’t have cared less.

The hotel hadn’t been short on rooms, as he suspected it wouldn’t be. It had taken them less than ten minutes to check in and haul their luggage through the rotating circular doors, Abby’s in a navy number bound by hard plastic and his in a black cloth duffel that stuck out like a sore thumb against the lobby’s semi-dilapidated interior.

It was a miracle, he thought, that he could even manage to stumble through the sentences necessary to inform the exhausted-looking woman at the front desk that they wanted a room for the night. The day had been long and unforgiving, with a four in the morning wake up to go for a quick run, followed by teaching an 8 a.m. lecture and speeding through the rest of his grading to depart for Polis by 1 in the afternoon. Such days tended to take a mental toll, and the last hour of driving had seen the exit signs become something of a disconcerting white and green blur. Impossible to read through a haze of excitement and exhaustion: a fatal combination if he’d ever experienced one.

But the true impossibility came in taking his eyes off of Abby – even in the yellowish light drifting from the ages-old bulbs in the dusty chandelier, she was stunning. Exhilarating. Breathtaking. There was little room for tiredness in his heart when she was there next to him, holding his hand underneath the counter with a tiny smirk that made apparent her plans for him when they arrived at their room.

And she was in love with him.

She was every bit as beautiful in her sweater and jeans as she had been in that curve-hugging dress she’d worn on their first date, her smile sparkling as brightly as the stone in the necklace nestled between her collarbones, marking the spot he’d kissed over and over and over again later that night. Her hold over him was so effortless, so casual, that she could have been wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants and he would’ve thought she was the single most beautiful woman on the face of the planet.

And she was _in love with him_.

Somehow, defying every single preconceived notion he’d planted in his head and allowed to grow through years and years of self-doubt and heartbreak and loneliness, she was in love with him. It was unlikely enough that he almost thought it unreal, wondered what kind of loathsome subconscious would subject him to this type of cruel and unusual punishment. As if not seeing her every day wasn’t enough.

Completely separate from his realm of control the moment kept playing over and over again in his mind’s eye; getting out of his car, abandoning the roses on the passenger seat just to get to her quicker, the sheer unbridled joy of having her in his arms. And that would have been enough, just to feel her breathing against his chest and holding her, especially after the night they’d had. He’d been anticipating nothing but a kiss or two, an at least partial reflection of the happiness he’d felt bursting from him at the sight of her. But she surprised him as she was wont to do, and those three words came bubbling to the surface.

She couldn’t possibly understand just how true they were, at least on his side. Although perhaps she could – after all, of the two of them she was the one with more experience saying them. She had been married before and in love before and gone through all of this before.

But there was no doubt in Marcus Kane’s mind as to how he felt. The warmth that radiated through him like summer sunlight whenever she was near, the desperate yearning to be wherever she was and to hold her and protect her from the cruel ways of the world (not that she needed protection, of course), the realization that he was half a human at best when she was gone.

He loved her. He loved her with every inch of his soul, with parts of himself that he thought had been lost to the abyss. He loved her with a desperate aching urgency, a love that grows and learns and breathes and _lives_. It was a love that had expanded to fill a dark void inside him that he’d been convinced would never be complete.

And he was in love with her.

As the desk attendant turned away to snatch a pair of keys, Abby raised herself up on her tiptoes to brush her mouth lightly against his neck, murmuring a few warm words into his skin with rose petal lips.

“Marcus, you’re staring,” she whispered, her grip tightening just a fraction as she held her balance. He smiled as she leaned away, disentangled himself from her as public convention dictated.

“I know,” he responded. Those were the only two words his brain gave him the power to give, the only two words that surfaced after a noncommittal firing of cylinders that ended in a puff of black smoke. For an English professor, he was almost ashamed of himself for not thinking of a better response.

There was truth in them, though: he knew he was staring. As bad a habit of his as it had ever been – he found it damn near impossible to take his eyes off of her, even when they’d been consumed with a hatred they’d cultivated as mutual. Abby Griffin had the unique capability to steal his breath away and give it back through the pressure of her lips on his, through the smoky sound of her voice and the mischievous glint in her eyes.

“Room 309,” the attendant said, completely unaware of their brief conversation. “Checkout time is 10 a.m.”

Forced to tear his eyes from her, Marcus regarded the attendant with gratitude.

“Thank you,” he said, taking both keys from her outstretched hand and handing one to Abby. She pocketed it immediately, depositing it in the red wool coat that held her cell phone, and he let go of her so they could manage their meager luggage.

The brief elevator ride to the third floor was lost in a sea of kisses and murmurs and moans, goosebumps forming as she found the spot she knew he liked – the unassuming patch of skin just below his pulse point – and pressed her open mouth to it, emboldened by the privacy of their surroundings and the ludicrousness of their situation. A sound emerged from him that he’d never heard before, something ripe with desperate yearning and animalistic need, and if the elevator hadn’t announced their arrival with a sharp _ding!_ he might have taken her right then and there.

Abby slid her hands down his chest as the doors squeaked open, pressing one last chaste kiss to his lips.

“Let’s find room 309,” she whispered, her voice husky and quiet, her pupils blown wide, and Marcus found himself scanning for empty storage closets or abandoned side rooms. 309, he thought with whatever dim brainpower remained in his capacity, had better be the room closest to the damn elevator.

True to form, this night was nothing like he’d planned. Marcus had imagined the evening to be nothing short of magical – or at least, _surprising_. He’d had the idea to surprise her for a few weeks. Considering how much the hole in his heart widened each time they spoke, he almost cancelled class and drove to see her on Thursday night instead of Friday. Common sense forced him to hold out until the time was right, but he’d walked into an empty apartment showing no signs of the woman he loved.

Sex hadn’t been his intent, either. Although her tease with Victoria’s Secret had been enough to make his mind go blank, his drive to Polis was driven by a need not founded in carnal desire. He missed everything about her, from the way she laughed to the almost-invisible tiny brown freckles that speckled her pale skin, and he was certain his heart would crunch under the weight of missing her like a leaf in the fall. Just seeing her, holding her…that would have been enough.

But that didn’t keep him from shoving her solidly against the heavy wooden door from the moment it closed behind them.

Well, it wasn’t instantaneous – they both shed their coats and ditched their luggage in a heap by a scratched, sad-looking dresser. Every inch of him pressed against her as her back collided with the solid surface, the sound of a soft _thunk_ nearly making him wince. But Abby gave a giggle that evolved into a sigh as it grew, letting him know there was nothing about which to be concerned.

“You’re getting bolder,” she observed, and he answered with a wry smile.

“It’s getting later,” he remarked between kisses, and his mouth left hers just long enough for her to give a tired, lustful laugh. Awake and alert Marcus would have cringed at the grammatical inconsistency in his statement – _it’s’ getting later?’ Really?_ – but half-asleep and consumed by desire, he could only find the motivation to slide his hands to the bottom of her sweater and underneath the cottony fabric, to feel her toned muscles twitch wherever he touched. Abby decided it was time for the garment to go, and yanked it over her head in one fluid motion.

She fumbled with the buttons on his shirt but emerged successful, exposing his chest to the soothing coolness of hotel air-conditioning. Her sighs dissolved into moans as his hands roamed to the waistband of her pants, unfastening buttons and unzipping zippers. Her hips bucked and she gasped his name, her fingernails scratching lightly at his scalp as she clutched at his hair.

It wasn’t long before she appeared to remember two could play at this game. As he kissed the tiny hollow of skin just below her earlobe she began grinding her hips against his, the friction of her jeans against his already-hardened cock making him dizzy and drawing a groan. He knew there was no way in hell they were going to be able to do this here, not on the fumes on which they were both just barely running.

But if they kept going like this, they weren’t going to finish what they’d started.

“Abby,” he groaned, half-panting, and because she was Abby Griffin she already knew what he wanted. Her eyes sparkled like the stars overhead, shone like the moonlight as she wrapped her arms around him and allowed herself to be led away from the entryway. Completely consumed with each other, with animalistic need and human desire, they only stopped kissing to discard any remaining barriers to closer contact.

Her clothes were on the ground in a blur of black lace – that, he realized, must have been what she was talking about earlier when she said she went shopping – and he silently swore that next time he’d take precautions to appreciate them. But for now, stopping equaled suffocation, stopping burned like the sun on a summer’s day, and to step away from her would be to steal the breath in his lungs.

A trail of clothes followed them in their path to the bed, a breadcrumb trail back to the place where it all began. She murmured something as she lay back on the bed and beckoned him closer, her gaze trailing from his eyes to his chest and sweeping lower, and as he flushed her words were lost to his momentary reflection. Even though it wasn’t their first time – or their second, or their third – seeing her obvious appreciation for him, the way her lips parted and her pupils dilated…it was enough to make the rest of the world go quiet and fall prey to the sound of blood rushing in his ears.

“What?” he asked as he climbed on top of her, sheepish.

“We’re getting better at this,” she said, smirking as he leaned down to devour her in a hungry kiss, an addicted kiss. And he sank down on top of her, felt the hard peaks of her nipples brush against his chest, her back arching as his mouth moved lower to find the hollow of her throat.

“We were never-“ she paused, whimpered as his tongue grazed the valley between her breasts, “ _bad_ at it.”

Abandoning every ounce of restraint in his body, he stared up at her with a scintillating grin.

“No,” he agreed, peppering kisses to her neck, her chest, emboldened by the way her breath shortened and her back arched. Even the unfinished time on the couch had shown up in his dreams, early morning light tearing him from her arms as his alarm bell rang and propelling him into a cold shower. “We weren’t.”

Gradually he kept moving lower and lower, swirling his tongue against her breasts and teasing her nipples into peaks, pressing his lips against the flat panes of her toned stomach. He slid his right hand into hers as his mouth moved to her thighs, felt her grip tighten. The sounds she was making were raw, desperate, a combination of lust and love and long distance mixed together in moans. In his wildest dreams, he’d never known she could sound like this.

He traced the tip of his tongue along her outer folds, teasing her, laying an arm across her hips. And she made that sound again – the one that sent blood rushing to his cock, the one that unstitched him completely and made him wonder how the hell he was going to go back to his lonely bed in his quiet apartment at Trikru after experiencing _this_.

“ _Marcus_ ,” she sighed, her hand a viselike grip. “Marcus, _please_.”

And although they were soaked with lust, her words betrayed some echo of genuine emotion: she was feeling the same as he did. On some level, in some small part of her brain, Abby Griffin was wondering how she’d go back to Arkadia after tonight, after solidifying the thing that had gone unspoken between them for so long. How she’d wake up to an empty bed, accompanied only by the scent of him and the blurry memories of whatever dreams might have visited her the night before. They were one in so many ways, he and her.

So he did the only thing he could do to show her, in this moment, the depth of his devotion to her.

He sank his mouth between her thighs, drank her in deeply, completely, savoring the sweet taste of her and the ecstatic cries and moans that bordered on euphoria. And he slid deeper, tracing circles around the place he knew burned for him most, drunk off the taste of her wetness and the way it felt to hear her moaning his name. They were both electric, sparking, glowing against the cold, black backdrop of the night.

“Marcus,” she moaned, gasping, his hand completely numb. “God, Marcus, I’m so close, I-“

Then without fanfare or warning he took her, relentless, his tongue insistent against her throbbing center. The fingers on her opposite hand wound into the sheets, clenching and unclenching as the waves of her impending orgasm rose inside of her. And she came for him again and again, diving into a blissful oblivion with his name on her lips.

And once he’d drunk his fill, once she’d collapsed against the mattress with a breathless gasp, she pulled him back up to her. Her tiny pink tongue darted out to lick her juices from his beard, his lips, his chin, the warmth of her making his head spin. Tasting her had been one thing, but this…this was heaven in a bed of sin, living fervently through a series of little deaths.

He felt himself pressing against her inner thigh, aching, an obvious indication of his own desire. And before he knew what was happening she’d reached down to grasp him, smiling with something in her eyes he knew only to be pure, true love.

“Your turn,” she murmured, kissing him deeply as she guided him inside of her.

In the array of times they’d been together, Marcus had never had her quite like this. The first time had been special in its own right – a mix of emotion and sensation for which they’d both been yearning since that night on the couch – and the others had been nothing short of haunting.

But this was about more than the way it felt to move inside her. This was about more than the dizzying sensation of the way her walls closed around him and how mind-numbingly difficult it was to go slowly when she was writhing with pleasure beneath him. Because they’d added a new layer to it all, finally put a name on the passionate, burning thing that grew inside them and cried out when they were parted.

And that word, that one, simple, four-letter word, was the only one small enough for his pleasure-addled brain to remember as their movements grew sloppy, kisses less precise. As they lost themselves in each other, filling his nostrils with the sweet scent of her sweat-soaked skin as his mouth moved to the pulse point on her neck, it bounced around like an echo. His reality had bent and molded to include two simple things; her, and the word that described his feelings for her better than any double-sided letter or perfectly-phrased poem ever could.

“Marcus,” she moaned, her fingernails digging into the sensitive skin on his back. The sensation of it was dizzying, electrifying, and he let out a low groan as he withdrew a fraction and plunged inside her again. They both cried out, prey to the passion that had led them here, no room in their minds for anything but the intoxicating way it felt to become one like this.

“You feel so good,” he groaned, panting. The sound of his own voice alerted him to the fact that he couldn’t go much longer like this – the rhythm of his thrusts was stuttering, his entire body burning and solidifying and melting all at once, a firestorm of conflicting sensations. She reached up and kissed him, over and over and over again with swollen lips, whispered into his ear a quiet plea for him not to hold back. And at her request – that simple, three-word order - he didn’t. He gave her everything, all of him, reaching the place inside her that drew sounds of pleasure so intense they were nearly screams.

Somewhere in a dimly lit corner of his brain he knew the headboard of the bed was colliding with the wall, prayed there wasn’t anyone in the next room to be awoken by their escapades. If he’d had the presence of mind to be embarrassed, he would have been. But there was no one home where his thoughts would have lived, vacated to make room for the sheer ecstasy of moving inside her and giving her this.

Marcus knew what she wanted without her asking for it, answered her question before it was asked. So he reached down between their undulating bodies, found the place where they connected, the rosy bundle of nerves that would send her over the edge.

“ _Yes_ ,” she panted, biting her kiss-swollen lower lip to keep from crying out. “Don’t stop, _please_ , don’t stop.”

Her words dissolved into moans, the time for talking arriving at its end. Her hips rose and fell beneath him as he stroked her clit, kissed her with pleasure-addled urgency, leaned away just enough to see her amber eyes losing focus, her lips parting to form a tiny ‘O’.

And Abby came first, losing the battle to keep herself even remotely quiet, muffling her sounds against his shoulder as she rode out the crashing waves of her second orgasm of the night. He followed only heartbeats behind, spilling over inside her with a low, guttural groan.

They took a few moments to catch their breath against the sweat-soaked comforter, Marcus softening inside her and sliding out slowly with a quiet _pop._ Then, after turning down the sheets and waiting for her to slide underneath them, he leaned over and gave her a slow, gentle, deep kiss. As she relaxed against the off-white pillows he folded her into his arms, wrapping himself around her and dreading the moment they’d have to let go.

She looked at him with half-open eyes, brushing her fingers through his hair and drawing a sigh of contentment from him. When she spoke her words were layered with drowsiness, a verbal mirroring of everything he felt. As overjoyed as he was to have her here, he could barely keep his eyelids from sliding closed.

“I love you,” she murmured, pressing her forehead to his so they shared the same pillow, breathed the same air. And although he knew they were likely to come untangled in the night, to wake up outside each other’s embrace, they were together now. And that, he thought as their heartbeats synchronized, was all that mattered.

“I love you, too,” he responded, certain he’d never tire of hearing those three syllables in that husky voice of hers. Even despite his exhaustion they sent a current of warm, muted electricity through his veins, a rush of elation like nothing he’d felt before. Because, at the end of it all, he’d never felt this for anyone but her.

This unyielding devotion, this yearning to have her and hold her and love her for as much time as he had left to give…it was new to him. But as he gazed at her in his arms, wrecked and whole and beautiful beyond compare, the flickering light of the hotel sign casting her in a sort of golden-white glow and lighting the smoothness of her pale skin, he knew he’d never feel it for anyone else.

For better or worse his heart bore an inscription with her name, built a home in her hands. Love, he thought, was one simple word that built a border around everything he felt for her. But for now, until the English language found another all-encompassing term, it would do.

“Goodnight, Abby,” he said, pressing a kiss into her damp hair. She smiled, already half-lost in a dream.

“Goodnight, Marcus.”

And as he drifted off slowly, the sensation of her breathing against his skin lulling him into a peaceful slumber, the last coherent thought in his mind was of how ungodly wonderful it felt to be able to tell her that one simple word when she was in his arms.

 

***

 

Daylight filtered through the translucent curtains, cool and calm, blindingly bright against the winter snow and aqua sky. But it wasn’t the light that stirred Marcus from the best sleep he’d had in over a month; it was the sensation of lips on his bare chest, of feather-light kisses that lasted little longer than a second but spread warmth the length of his body. Voice layered with sleep, he opened his mouth and murmured a single word.

“ _Abby_ ,” he whispered, not sure if it was an acknowledgement or a warning. Not that he didn’t enjoy the way things were going, but if they made this anything like last night…well, they needed to be out of here in an hour and a half. Under normal circumstances that wouldn’t have been a problem. But he was already half-hard and she wore that impish glint in her eyes, the one that made it apparent she was up to _something_.

“Good morning, _Professor Kane_ ,” she responded wryly. She’d taken the liberty of clearing the sheets off his torso, covering him with her warmth. Thankfully, the heater in the room was doing its job. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes. Better than I have in-“ and he stopped short, words marred by a gasp. Her question had been a cover for her to go back to what she’d been doing – where she’d been _going_ – and damn her, he should have realized it. “We have to leave in an hour and a half,” he said, and he could hear the smirk in her velvety voice.

“Then tell me to stop.”

Since she’d posed her question her mouth had moved lower, grazing his hipbone, his upper thighs as she turned down the sheets even farther. That fiery blaze that had sparked between them last night began to burn again, and Marcus found himself transfixed by its heat.

Put simply, there was no way in hell he’d find the resolve to tell her to stop.

Put even simpler, there was no way in hell he wanted her to.

She pressed a light kiss to his already rock-hard length, and he wound his fingers into the waves of her chestnut hair as the speckled paint of the hotel ceiling began to blur.

“Oh, Abby,” he moaned, fingers clenching of their own will as he felt himself falling, sinking, fading out of the rest of reality and into her. She took more of him in, making a sound of contentment that fell somewhere between a hum and a moan, her tongue swirling and stroking and finding the place that melted him into a whirlpool of sensation and faint, aching lust.

She took him deeper and deeper and deeper between her soft pink lips, her hands working in unison with her mouth to send shockwaves of desire and pleasure coursing through him. He clutched with a white-knuckled grip at the sheets as she licked him, slow and steady and sure, as if she’d mapped all the sensitive places on his body and knew exactly how to make him feel like this. How to unstitch him, dissolve him, break him down into a disjointed, dizzy mess of lust and pure, unfettered love.

There were places even he didn’t know could feel like this – things she did with her hands, her mouth, that he hadn’t known could do this to him, could feel this _good_ ; in so many ways, she knew him better than he knew himself. And it wasn’t long before he felt himself swelling toward climax, animalistic groans prying their way from between his lips as her soft, warm, wet mouth continued devouring him.

The sounds he made seemed to energize her, empower her, and she gave another little hum of blissful contentment as he edged closer and closer to that ecstatic oblivion.

“Abby,” he panted, his words coming in short, ecstatic gasps. “Abby, I can’t-I’m going to-“

And with one last flick of her tongue against his underside he was gone, spilling over into her mouth with a guttural groan and one hand in her hair. And he came and came, panting his pleasure against sheets that were still faintly damp with sweat from the night before, sheets that smelled of her perfume and his cologne and the words they’d pressed into each other with lips and fingertips.

He collapsed into the mattress after, weightless, every inch of his body humming with an afterglow brighter than the day dawning around them. And Abby emerged from the edge of the bed, beautiful and sparkling with contentment, her hair an amber waterfall and her eyes topaz jewels. He opened his arms for her and she collapsed into him, nuzzling his neck as he stroked her hair and kissed her forehead.

“We still have an hour before we have to leave,” she murmured against his chest after a few minutes of quiet synchronized breaths and heartbeats. There was a suggestion there – open to inference, but there nonetheless – and yet, he knew it wasn’t possible. Not if they wanted to get out of here without any extra charges.

“Are we going back to Polis?” he asked, realizing as the words came out that they’d never actually discussed where they were going. They’d simply abandoned their plans with the rest of their clothes, casting them down onto the floor without a second thought, leaving them for morning light to sort out. Except now it was morning, his whole body was humming with the ghost of their connection, and they had no clue what they were doing next. “Or do you still want to go to Trikru?”

“I hadn’t thought about it yet,” she said, sounding as clueless as he felt. For a pair of teachers, they had yet to cement their organization. “But as long as we’re here, I’m going to take a shower. We can talk about it over breakfast.”

After enduring an eight-hour drive the night before, he could hardly blame her. A hot shower sounded heavenly. She rolled over, rotating so she lay squarely between his legs with her head on his chest. Almost without thinking he wrapped his arms around her, resting his hands on the small of her back. Her smile was catching, infectious, and he couldn’t help wondering if she was thinking what he thought she might be thinking.

The clock beckoned with its crimson glow, threatening to shatter his illusions with the time, but he averted his eyes. As exhausted as they both were, it didn’t matter.

“Should I...” he trailed off, words consumed by unfounded uncertainty. They didn’t have much time, but if they could do this right – if they could make it work - she deserved _something_ after what she’d just given him. And although he wished he had more time to make it special, they were running on fumes as they approached the finish line.

Abby leaned down and pressed a slow, soft kiss to his lips, leaned away with a bleary-eyed smile. They were both running on fumes, but he thought he had just enough left for this. If she wanted it.

“ _Absolutely_.”

In an instant she’d moved out of his arms, the lack of her weight on the mattress causing it to spring upward and send him into midair for a few moments. When he came back down to earth – both literally and figuratively – she’d already opened the door to the bathroom and turned on the light. There was no preparation necessary, no clothes to remove and toss across a room, and he wasn’t surprised to hear the hissing of water spurting from the shower head a few minutes later.

With a sigh he raised himself from the soft surface of the bed, left the indent of his form on the cushioned white comforter where they’d both lain to catch their breath. The carpet was bristly and involuntarily, his toes curled: a pair of shoes wouldn’t have gone amiss where this journey was concerned. Marcus wasn’t overly fond of hotels, and things like this – dubiously clean carpets and eerie, unexplained scratches on furniture - were prime examples of reasons why.

Everything had an air of being just left of center, just a hair away from normalcy, as if time itself hung suspended in midair once the door clicked closed. But he couldn’t possibly give weight to his preferences now, not when Abby Griffin was waiting for him in the shower and they likely had less than 48 hours left to spend together.

He closed the bathroom door behind him as he walked in, noticed the mirror had fogged so badly that he was nothing more than a concentration of blurry colors and shapes. The ventilation was certainly nothing to write home about.

But such petty complaints evaporated as he looked down at her, droplets dancing down her skin to swirl into the rusty drain, cupped her chin with the palm of his right hand. The look she gave him made his chest ache – it was lustful, adoring, gentle, admiring and disbelieving all at once. She glanced away almost as soon as they made eye contact, and he realized some of those droplets had been tears. Abby Griffin was crying.

“Abby?” he whispered – or at least he meant to whisper, the showers were too damn loud and everything echoed like they were standing in a cave. And he waited, wondering if her emotions were a result of tiredness or the overwhelming situation in which they’d found themselves or the realization that while tonight and tomorrow would be heavenly, they’d have to go back to Earth all too soon.

All things considered, there were a number of reasons the tiny woman in his arms was biting her lower lip and taking a few deep breaths of steam.

“I’m okay,” she said firmly, reaching up to wrap her arms around him, tangling her hands in the wet hair at the nape of his neck. But her eyes were still red-rimmed, her fingers trembling, and he found himself quite unable to read the emotion swelling in her chestnut eyes.

So, since interpretation had failed him spectacularly, he was forced to ask again.

“Are you?” he murmured. Under normal circumstances he would have relished this – the intoxicating feeling of her, soft and warm against him, close enough that he could feel the beating of her heart as her chest rose and fell. But this was an unknown, a question mark at the end of a sentence where he thought he’d find a period.

“I just…” she paused, wiped a stray droplet from her forehead before it fell into her eyes. Despite the fact that they were covered in water and there was little way to tell if he was wiping away freshwater or saltwater, Marcus reached forward and cupped the side of her face with his hand, stroked her cheek with his thumb to wipe away her tears. She smiled a wobbly smile, leaned into his touch with a shaky sigh.

“I never thought I’d have this,” she said in a rush, as if she were afraid that stopping the flow of her words might mean she could never find them again. “After Jake, part of me thought that was it. That I wouldn’t find something like this again. I was almost convinced I couldn’t love someone the way I loved him. That I had my chance, and it was gone.”

Marcus nodded, lost for words. He thought so often about how lucky he was to have her – how shockingly outside the realm of reality his situation fell, that he would be the one selected by whatever power presided over the universe to be the object of her love – but he hadn’t often enough thought about how things might appear from her side. While she wasn’t dealing with ghosts of a past long forgotten and a future rife with uncertainty, the fact remained that she’d been married before. Jake Griffin’s ring still hung around her neck, a homing beacon of times gone forever. He hadn’t known Jake well, but he assumed he and Abby had been happy together. Intended to spend the rest of their lives together.

He knew enough about Jake Griffin to know he was a better man than Marcus could ever hope to be. And yet somehow, through the universe’s twisted sense of justice, Marcus was the one standing in the shower with Abigail Griffin, holding her close and stroking her hair through rivulets of steaming water. It should have been Jake, he knew. It should have been Jake making love to her on a cheap hotel comforter. It should have been Jake with his hands in her hair and his mouth on her skin, murmuring promises of love and unfettered adoration. It should have been him, if the world was kind and good and just.

But the world was anything but kind. It was callous, cruel for the sake of cruel, and they both knew it. And yet they’d somehow managed to create a glowing ray of hope in that impenetrable darkness. She was the light in his soul when his was extinguished, and now it seemed she was telling him that he was the same thing for her.

“Getting drunk on school property was one of the best things I’ve done in my life,” she said, voice thick. An awake and fully functioning Abby wouldn’t have been so forward. Not that she wouldn’t have told him how she felt – after all, she was the half of their relationship who said those three words first – but this level of emotional revelation was a byproduct of exhaustion and distance. It had to be. “And even though it led us here, I’d do it all over again.”

“So would I,” Marcus answered without hesitation, the warmth of the water and her words making his skin tingle. “Although the hangover the next day was…unfortunate.”

Abby laughed, a sound he loved just as much as any of his favorite songs. But her laugh was different because it was soft, safe, comforting, and he felt genuine happiness in the knowledge that he could cause it. He could be the reason she smiled.

“I didn’t think I’d have something like this, either,” Marcus stuttered over a swirling sea of emotion roiling in his chest, snatching a bar of soap from the bathtub’s edge and kneading it gently against her shoulders. She gave a blissful little sigh, relaxing into him even further as his hands moved to the small of her back, her hips, her thighs.

She was so beautiful like this – glassy water droplets trickling down her milky skin, her hair nearly black under streams of steaming water, staring at him as though he were the only man in the world. “I just thought that after everything I’d been through, this wasn’t something meant for me. That it was my penance for doing…what I did. But then you came along, and I realized I could start over. That I didn’t have to be miserable for the rest of my life.”

They were both teary-eyed now, breathing in tendrils of steam as Marcus folded her into his arms after brushing the floral-scented soap over her chest. Abby rested her head in the space between his head and his shoulder, her lips barely brushing against the sensitive skin of his neck.

“We’re going to figure this out,” Marcus said, breathing in tendrils of steam and folding her into his arms. “This driving back and forth…it’s not going to last forever.”

He felt her smile against his skin, reaching behind her to take the soap from him. And she started the same way, at his shoulders, massaging the bar down his back with a gentle, expert touch.

“It would’ve gone smoothly enough if we hadn’t _both_ decided to surprise each other,” she remarked. The heat and the scent of wildflowers and the sound of her voice were lulling him into a languid contentment, pushing him into an indulgent alternate reality where there was nothing but Abby and warmth and light. It felt so dreamlike that he feared closing his eyes, worried that opening them again would prove her presence nothing more than a subconscious mirage.

“True,” he conceded with a chuckle, holding one of her hands as it rested over his heart. “But I don’t want this to be the way things are for us, Abby. I don’t want us to be six hours apart if we don’t have to be. And eventually, I hope we won’t.”

She opened her mouth to say something – probably to tell him it didn’t matter, as long as he was happy. Marcus was tempted to use his students’ language and call “bullshit.” This separation was the equivalent of slow torture, of waking up to the same dismal day over and over again and reliving it with a hot iron searing his heart. If she felt even _half_ of what he did, the distance was hurting her, too. Even though she’d deny it to alleviate his guilt.

“You made the right choice,” she said instead, defying his expectations. “I’m not going to pretend it’s been easy, but you didn’t have another option. And now you have a job you enjoy working for one of your oldest friends, and I have Clarke and Callie and the kids. We still have each other. Distance hasn’t changed that.”

_And it won’t change that._

They could have been across the country from each other, he thought, and he still would have felt that same magnetic pull to her that he felt from six hours away, that he’d felt from across the hallway of Arkadia High. Time only lengthened the hours it took for them to reach each other, not the distance between their hearts.

Finished, she deposited the bar on the ledge of the tub and turned back to him. Marcus angled his head down to kiss her then, slow and deep, tasting her with a gentle urgency she returned. Her hands reached up to cup the sides of his face as he savored the sweet taste of her, the warmth of the water melting them together. It boiled them down to a tangle of lips and wandering hands and whispered words, phrases reserved for a hotel shower in the middle of nowhere with a negative chance of discovery by anyone who knew them.

All too quickly she leaned away, regarded him with a teasing sparkle in her eyes.

“Whatever happened to that checkout time?” she asked, one hand still resting against his soaked cheek, soft through the salt and pepper scratchiness of his beard.

“Damn,” he muttered, and she laughed. Taking the hint she reached behind him to turn off the water, exposing them both to the inescapable wintry chill that hung in the air despite the humidity.

“If you still want to go to Trikru, we can,” he said. She smiled, lighting with a glow the shower hadn’t bestowed, and he knew this was the right path for them to travel. He remembered she’d graduated from there, too, and likely wanted to see her school again; as much as she wanted to see him, he wasn’t the only draw to the area.

“I’d like that,” she said, wrapping herself in a towel that barely covered the creamy swell of her ass. She handed him a similar number and they dried off, tossed each other items of clothing they’d discarded in the desperation of their desire the night before. And all the while, Marcus couldn’t keep a wide grin from stretching across his lips.

They were together again.


	21. Of Memories and Secrets

 Abby paused under the high stone archway that formed the border between the Trikru campus and the world beyond, remembering the last time she’d stood under it. The day of her graduation had been nothing short of spectacular, a kind of perfection only possible on a day when the whole world shifts on its axis, a day when everything was about to change, when the universe felt more like an open door and less like a brick wall.

Her parents drove halfway across the country to be there. Jake took her on a date to her favorite restaurant. But before the festivities they’d all taken a picture under this arch, resting their hands on the steel railing as her dad fumbled with the camera. And for everything else that had changed on campus since then – her small college town had become something of a booming metropolis, and she didn’t recognize at least half of the stores downtown – this archway and the building to which it led had stayed exactly the same. They were untouched by the hands of time, the smooth stone still as polished as the day she’d walked through it as a graduate instead of just a _student_. There were still years and years of medical school to go, but the first step had been taken. It was impossible to stand under it without feeling some remnants of that old excitement, an echo of the electrifying emotions that had thrummed through her all those years ago.

“Do you want to get a picture?” Marcus asked, startling her from her reverie. “I can take one, if you want.”

It took her a few moments to realize exactly what he meant; he was asking if she wanted a picture of herself standing under the arch. The significance of the place hadn’t escaped him, and he knew, for whatever reason, that this was a landmark engraved in her memory. As much as she wanted another picture of herself here – a milestone return to the place where she’d studied, lived, and learned - it almost seemed wrong to exclude him. Marcus Kane had become a key component to the place for her now, an asterisk at the end of the sentence of her youth that led to a whole new paragraph. There was little point, she thought, in reliving those old memories unless she had something to signify the new ones she was making now.

“Actually,” she said, “I thought you might want to be in it with me.”

Marcus smiled and slid his hand from hers, finding his cell phone in his coat pocket.

“Abby, _you_ went to school here,” he insisted, ushering her toward the arch with a sweep of his hand. “You don’t have to include me in this if you’d rather not. Besides, Trikru and Mount Weather have a nasty rivalry. It might be against campus rules for a Mount Weather alum to have his picture taken under such a _sacred arch_.”

Abby rolled her eyes, sensing sarcasm in the last part of his statement.

“But it’s not against the ‘law’ for you to work here? Talk about double standards. I’ll have to talk to someone in the hiring department. Or Indra.”

Marcus shushed her playfully, stepping closer so only she could hear his words.

“Quiet!” he exclaimed in a hushed, short whisper. “Someone might hear you.”

Feeling very much like a teenager again with the winter air stinging her cheeks and the sunlight warming her coat and Marcus by her side, Abby did something that, under normal circumstances, would have made her cringe.

“Marcus Kane graduated from Mount Weather!” she exclaimed loudly, using her hands as a megaphone and drawing the attention of several confused passersby who didn’t know her – or her companion – from anyone else on the sprawling campus. “He didn’t go here!”

Smirking, she turned back to him and glimpsed the dour frown spreading across his brow. His hands were shoved in his pockets with faint discontent and back shoulders stiffened, as though he really were worried about her outburst.

“What?” she said, raising her eyebrows in an attempt to lighten his sour mood. “I don’t see anyone running to arrest you, Professor.”

“My point still stands,” he said, his tone falling somewhere between amused and paranoid as he scanned the area for anyone who might be descending upon them to insist he vacate the premises. “That’s one of the oldest structures here. It was built in 1848, for God’s sake. I don’t think they’d look kindly on-“

“Go ahead, Kane,” a voice, rich and teasing, uttered from behind them. “No one’s watching.”

Abby spun to face their visitor with confusion. Not that people wouldn’t know Marcus – he’d been here a month – but gaining license to tease him took far longer. Which must have meant this woman, her nutmeg skin glowing in the afternoon sunlight, was…

“Indra?” Abby stammered in an involuntary brain-to-mouth connection, almost afraid to utter those two syllables in case she was wrong. Thankfully the woman nodded, her eyes the color of warm coffee.

“You must be Abby,” she said, and Abby affirmed her assumption with a nod. “I heard you yelling earlier.” She leveled her gaze on her old college friend, a tiny smile playing at the corners of her lips as Abby felt a blush creeping over her cheeks. “She’s a fiery one, Kane. You’d be wise to be careful with her.”

There was something appraising in the way Indra’s words described her; it was an admiring kind of warning, an approving piece of advice. Abby thought from the woman in the black leather jacket in front of her – a woman who exuded an aura of mystery, strength, and vigor - it was probably a compliment. And a compliment from Indra – Marcus’ oldest friend – would certainly go a long way in the approval of their relationship.

“Don’t I know it,” Marcus muttered under his breath, but his eyes were soft. He glanced at Abby for a moment, as if to make sure she hadn’t been offended, before continuing his impromptu conversation.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You don’t teach a Saturday class, do you?”

Indra shook her head. “I was at the library. A book I ordered came in yesterday, but I didn’t have time to pick it up before they closed.” She looked approvingly at the leather bag slung over her shoulder. “It’ll be an interesting read.”

“What’s it about?” Abby jumped in, suddenly feeling the need to be part of the conversation. There was something intriguing about Indra, and although she was slightly imposing she radiated warmth.

“Nakano Takeko,” Indra said, her pronunciation flawless. Abby frowned, perplexed. Sensing her confusion, she explained, “She was a samurai in Japan during the Boshin War. One of the only women to hold the title.”

“Oh,” Abby sighed, content in her understanding. If she hadn’t spent so much time reading Wuthering Heights and various scientific textbooks, she might have been interested in subjects such as female samurai. But as it were, there were barely enough hours in the day for her to have enough time to skim the pages of whatever assignment she’d given the kids.

“So,” Indra said, changing the subject. “What are you doing today? Besides avoiding taking pictures.”

Abby laughed, Marcus frowned.

“We, um,” Marcus started, fumbling with his words. Because they hadn’t discussed any plans beyond getting breakfast – which they’d done at a rest stop an hour after they hit the road – and truthfully, neither of them had the slightest inclination as to where the day was going. “We haven’t decided. But Abby graduated from here, so I think we were going to walk around for a while.”

“I see,” Indra noted, hoisting her bag higher on her shoulder. “Unfortunately, I have to go – I’m having a meeting with a prospective student. She’s not interested in the English program, but most of the Political Science department left campus for the weekend. So she’s been assigned to me.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Abby added, wishing their time hadn’t drawn to an end so soon. Indra was a woman of few words, but there was an intrigue about her that made her friendship with Marcus more than fitting. He hadn’t been lying when he told her they’d get along.

“And you, Ms. Griffin,” Indra said with a small smile. “Before I go, I’m willing to take a picture of you under the arch. Both of you.”

She aimed a pointed glare at Marcus, and he withered under its intensity. Smirking, Abby began to form hypotheses about who got their way most often in the friendship.

“Fine,” he muttered, “but if my office gets vandalized…”

Abby and Indra shared a look as she handed her her phone, and her appreciation for the woman was cemented. Neither of them could quite believe Marcus’ incredible hesitancy. Abby half-expected Indra to roll her eyes, but suspected she wasn’t prone to such outward displays of emotion.

After handing over her phone Abby grabbed Marcus by the arm, hauling him the brief distance to the forbidden archway. Despite his reservations, he wrapped his arm around her, securing her to his side, and she instinctively found herself leaning into him. On Indra’s count, they smiled for the camera.

The wind might have been blowing, the sun shining directly into their eyes and making them squint. There were people in the background, one of whom struck an obnoxious pose upon finding a photo was being taken. But to Abby, it didn’t matter. When Indra gave her her phone again and said a brief – but warm – goodbye, there was only one thought running through her head.

_I_ _t's_ _already one of my favorites._

               

***

Marcus took her to a small diner for dinner after wandering the campus for most of the day – nothing too fancy, not in a college town – but she thought she might have hazy memories of the place. It was called something different now and was a little darker inside than it used to be, but she remembered the shapes of these tables, the framed pictures that hung unevenly on the walls, the red brick that coated the walls of the restaurant. Had she been here with Jake, decades ago? She was so lost in her reminiscing that even Marcus took notice, glancing at her questioningly over the top of his menu.

“You remember this place,” he assumed, and she felt herself start a bit in astonishment. Marcus reading her like one of his classic Victorian novels was nothing new, but that didn’t stop her from being surprised at the ease with which he did it.

“How did you know?” she asked, amused, skimming the menu for something that fell just outside the reaches of her memory, a dish she wasn’t even sure existed anymore. She could taste it as if it were yesterday, the creamy smoothness of the sauce and the muted saltiness of the pasta seasoning…but maybe it hadn’t been here after all. Memories tended to get jumbled after almost thirty years of lying dormant, and she couldn’t quite distinguish what was real from what her brain provided her as fact.

“A good guess,” he said sheepishly, setting his menu down gently on the scratched wooden surface of the table. “But you’ve been wearing that look all day today.”

“What look?”

“You’re sentimental about being here,” Marcus said, and Abby knew she couldn’t argue with him. Even though many things were now unrecognizable to her – the buildings remodeled, the storefronts strange and unfamiliar – the air on the campus was as welcoming and inviting as it had always been, and their stroll through the relatively unchanged medical building had been oddly comforting. It was nice to know that although thousands of things had changed since the last time she’d been to Trikru, one thing had remained the same.

“You haven’t been back since you graduated, have you?” Marcus asked, and Abby answered with a shake of her head.

“I wasn’t too passionate about sports,” Abby said, feeling a need to elaborate when she noticed the curiosity flickering in his brown gaze, alight by the golden light glowing overhead. “And we had Clarke to take care of soon enough. I think Jake went to the homecoming game the year before she was born, but he decided it wasn’t for him. And driving six hours just to walk around a campus…we both wanted to, but there was never a good time.”

An expression flitted across his face for a fraction of a second – was it dismay? – and Abby realized how her statement must have sounded. _Driving six hours…_ she’d undoubtedly stirred that monster of guilt into wakefulness, started it clawing away at his chest again.

“I can imagine,” Marcus said, offering her a faint smile instead of the apology she’d all but expected. “I haven’t been back to Mount Weather, either. But there’s no love lost between organized sports and I.”

Abby couldn’t help herself: she laughed. If any man were the type to not enjoy sitting on the couch on Sunday nights and watching football, it would be Marcus Kane. She wondered if he’d ever seen a football game in his life. What did he do on Sunday nights, anyway? He probably sat in his apartment and read things like Wuthering Heights. Things she wouldn’t have thought to read herself, but that were invariably better than trying to determine which team to root for while submerging herself in a stack of papers that hadn’t gotten graded earlier. Knowing him, he would’ve already gotten the grading done.

“What’s so funny?” Marcus asked, trying to bite back a grin but failing miserably.

“Just you, Marcus,” she said after a pause, wishing more than anything that these booths weren’t keeping them so far apart. Wishing she could lean in and press a kiss to his cheek, wishing she could see that sweet red blush creep across his cheeks when she leaned away. She felt like a college girl again, wanting to reach across the table to touch her date, hating the wooden board that separated them as solidly as that damning six-mile distance. For God’s sake, she’d come this far. Being next to him and not next to him at all…it was frustrating on a variety of levels.   

“Well, I’m happy I can offer some amusement,” he said, drawing another tiny giggle from her. Yet another thing she hadn’t done since college…or since Jake, at least. She wasn’t certain she even recognized the sound as her own yet, as a noise of which her body was capable of making.

The waitress, a tall girl with a wide smile, arrived with their drinks and asked if they were ready to order. Realizing she hadn’t given even a fraction of her attention to the menu, Abby let Marcus go first. He ordered a salmon filet – something she hadn’t considered, but imagined might be good if she felt like eating fish tonight. Which she didn’t.

Having finished recording his order, the waitress turned to her.

“Are you all set?” she asked, her voice betraying the canned perkiness of one who’d been on the job for a few minutes past the end of her shift. Not wanting to extend her hours any longer, Abby resolved to pick the next thing she saw. Everything looked good, and if this place had been around since she was in school then it must have been of decent quality. No point in haggling over it for longer than she had to.

“I’ll have the…marinara pasta,” Abby finished, glancing at Marcus to see him struggling to hold back a grin, his eyes sparkling like the stars she glimpsed through the diner window. Clearly, he thought she’d planned the whole thing. And despite the circumstances, she thought it might be nice to let him believe it.

“Actually, I’d like to change my order to the pasta as well,” Marcus interjected, and Abby failed where her date had succeeded: she beamed. “The same thing she’s having.”

The waitress scribbled furiously on her notepad, her smile tightening a fraction.

“Okay, _two_ marinara pastas,” she said in an attempt to conceal her exasperation, looking between the two of them with befuddlement and wandering away wondering what was so brilliant about marinara pasta.

“They probably don’t make their own sauce,” Abby said as soon as she was out of earshot, teasing him. “I hope that’s not too low-class for you, chef extraordinaire.”

“Hey,” Marcus said, feigning offense with a hand over his heart. “As I recall, there are some excellent dishes that can be prepared with store-bought marinara. Or don’t you remember?”

Oh, she remembered. It would have been damn near impossible to forget. But her memory served her better with the events that happened after the dinner than anything she’d tasted earlier that night, her lips tingling at the sensation of the memory.

“I remember you lied to me,” she said, keeping the joke alive.

“Oh, we’re going _there_ again?” Marcus said, running a hand through his dark hair as he leaned back against the quilted cushions of the booth. The winter wind had mussed it slightly on their walk from campus into the town, and he’d now appeared to see fit to set it straight. One strand still stood ramrod-straight from his forehead, pointing upward like a miniature skyscraper toward the light over their table, and she ached to be able to run her fingers through it and guide it back where it belonged.

“We never left, Marcus,” she said with a wiggle of her eyebrows. She hadn’t so much as taken a single sip of her wine, but she felt dizzy just from looking at him. Seeing him happy was its own kind of intoxicating, especially given the sadness that barraged them during his last week at Arkadia. There was something especially alluring about him like this, laughing without a care in the world, teasing her as though they hadn’t had to crawl through the labyrinth of long distance to see each other in person.

“Well, what can I do to make it up to you?” he asked, equally smug, and Abby nearly laughed again. Because for most men, that question would have been a suggestion, an implication, a mode of seduction. And as reluctant as she was to admit it, her mind had immediately found that dumpster and jumped in it; _take me back to your apartment, and I’ll show you what you can do to make me forget all about it._

But that wasn’t something she wanted to say with dozens of college kids and young families around, so her brain would have to haul itself out of the gutter. And Marcus Kane, for all his clueless romanticism, appeared to have meant it on some level as a genuine question. _I’m sorry I lied to you about the pasta sauce, what can I do to set it right?_

So instead of saying what she was really thinking, she forced her mouth to form a PG-rated alternative.

“You can teach me how to make it,” she said. “The sauce.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Marcus said after a pause, as if considering whether or not he’d be able to get all his beloved ingredients from the Polis Market at this time of year. “It’s pretty simple. But I have to warn you, once you try it you’ll never go back to the store brands.”

Then she really did laugh, louder than she meant to, startling a few college kids at the table across from theirs. She gave them an apologetic glance and they turned back to their pizza, forgetting all about the woman who appeared to be on a date with their English 2100 professor. With a quick glance at each other, it was decided: Professor Kane was going to hear about this on Monday.

“I’ll accept that challenge,” she said, reaching across the table for his hand.

They sat in silence for a bit, sipping wine and letting the dim chatter of the patrons around them fill the gap in their conversation. Abby heard her phone buzz inside her purse, decided to answer it later; Clarke would have called if she needed to get ahold of her immediately, and Raven could wait another half-hour until she was done with dinner.

Beyond the two of them, the only other person who texted her with any frequency was sitting across from her at the table, his gaze wandering around the room and landing on the kids in the booth. She watched as he lit up with a smile of genuine delight, waved to the students who gave him naught but semi-reluctant waves and brittle smiles in return. Part of her wondered how Marcus Kane could have ever worked in the business sphere, given how perfectly molded he was to the world of teaching. It was like imagining herself as an actress; interesting, intriguing, but utterly unreal.

She didn’t register the content of his sentence until her heart had already dropped.

“At least Jaha isn’t around to bother us this time,” he said, his grip on her hand tightening as he ran his thumb over the knuckles on her right hand. Instinctively her fingers clenched, a defense mechanism against a subject around which she’d built mile-high walls.

If there was one thing she didn’t want to talk about, it was Thelonious Jaha.

But if there was one thing she needed to talk about, it was Thelonious Jaha.

Marcus deserved to know what was going on, that there was another page to the story of why he lost his job, and she had every intent of reading that page to him. Abby kept telling herself she was going to broach the subject and then finding the words frozen on her tongue, stuck there, unwilling to move.

She didn’t want to do it now, not in front of all these strangers and students and people she didn’t know. She wanted to do it in the safety of his apartment, where everything felt as though she were wrapped in his embrace, where the very air she breathed seemed to calm her racing thoughts and help her think clearly after a long day of work. Marcus’ observation had been innocent enough, but it caused a surge of anxiety in her chest that it was hard to push down.

How long could she keep going like this, knowing he only had part of the truth as to why he’d been fired? He knew the official reason, certainly, but he didn’t know what was in Thelonious Jaha’s heart. And for her part, Abby Griffin wished she’d never found out.

He’d already sabotaged them in their separation, and it seemed unfair to Marcus to let him sabotage what they had now. To let him steal this night from her the way he’d stolen their companionship at Arkadia, split them so they could only talk on the phone and feel each other’s warmth through words. Jaha had already taken him from her on most days: she would not let him have this day, too.

But in order to get him to stop stealing this time from them, she’d have to conquer the subject first. She’d have to tell him the uncomfortable truth and realize that whatever came out of his mouth, whatever he felt when he found out, he had every right to be feeling. More than anything, she wished there was a way to just undo it. To make it as though it had never happened.

Octavia was a start, she thought, but that wouldn’t create an opening for him to move back. And the longer he stayed at Trikru, the less likely he’d be open to risking everything he had here for a high school position. Abby couldn’t blame him for that; the pay was better here, the community seemed better here, the history was rich here. It was a beautiful campus with no shortage of opportunity.

And yet, part of her knew that if there were a chance for him to move back, to be with her again, that he’d take it. That there was no point in indulging these senseless worries, no logic in following her mind down the dark path to which it introduced her.

“Abby, are you all right?” he asked, reading her for the second time that night, and she was no longer certain whether or not she’d be able to pretend. Whether she could put on that mask of a smile and pretend Jaha’s name didn’t send a chill down her spine, didn’t send dread pulsing through every inch of her body along with the beat of her heart. _Tell him. You have to tell him._

But not here. Not now.

She wouldn’t let Jaha have this. He could have the rest of the night, once they arrived at Marcus’ apartment and before they put in Titanic. That time, he could have. But he couldn’t pry this dinner from her hands.

“I’m fine,” she said, her chest tightening at Marcus’ expression. She could tell from the crease in his brow that he didn’t believe her – his face was calling her bluff, even if his words weren’t – and that she wouldn’t have to be the one to bring up the subject later tonight. Marcus, being Marcus, would remember.

“Okay,” he said, his posture stiffening as he looked away. He wasn’t buying it. And now his words were calling her bluff, too, his voice taking on a hollow quality she had heard from him only once right before he left. There was an elusive emptiness to it now, an equality in distance between her mindset and his tone.

Something was wrong, and Marcus knew it. He might not have known what it was, but he could tell she wasn’t fine. Of course he could. The curse, she thought, of loving someone who had a roadmap of your heart.

_Tell him. You have to tell him._

After giving her hand a reassuring squeeze he pulled away, took a sip of wine to offset the heaviness of the silence between them. Abby left her hand on the table for a few heartbeats longer, wondering if he’d hold it again once he set down the glass. But his fingers didn’t lace with hers again, his warmth didn’t return, and she withdrew her hand and retreated into her head.

There was the matter of Octavia’s plan, her determination to wipe that footage clean so the door was at least open for his return. And looking at him now, clearly concerned about what was bothering her, Abby couldn’t help wondering if that was something else about which he deserved to know. Considering they were doing it for him, to benefit him…should they at least keep him informed? But what if he told her not to worry about it? Tried to deter she and Octavia from going through with it? He had to know she’d never take ‘no’ for an answer. As Abigail Griffin, ‘no’ was a highly underused part of her vocabulary, and she liked it that way.

Another question nagged her, insistent, like the buzzing of a mosquito in her ear. What would it mean for them if he didn’t want the footage deleted? If he told her to talk some sense into Octavia instead of giving them the green light? And between this and the Jaha conversation, which was she ready to have tonight? If any of them?

The answer to the last one was simple: none of the above.

“Marcus-“ she started, her mouth moving without permission from her brain. She had no clue where she was going with the rest of her sentence, but he saved her.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to talk about it,” he said, still hollow. He wasn’t smiling anymore, he wasn’t laughing, and her chest hurt. And it occurred to her that she wasn’t the only one whose brain was spinning a mile a minute, whose pulse was skyrocketing. For all he knew, she was going to go back to his apartment with him and tell him they couldn’t do this anymore. That long distance was too much. After all, as much as she felt for him, they’d only been together for a few months. They sure as hell weren’t married, and they hadn’t exactly begun things in a traditional way.

Not that she thought he’d assume such a thing after this morning, but…he was Marcus Kane. He’d always be Marcus Kane. No matter how many times she told him she loved him, there would always be a voice in the back of his head that told him he wasn’t good enough. He would always be haunted by the ghosts of his past, no matter how many times she tried to drive them away.

 _No._ She wouldn’t let their dinner be haunted, too.

“It’s nothing too important,” she said, desperately hoping to patch the holes in their night. She’d have to say it, at least let him know he didn’t have to be worried about it. “And it’s not about us, either. It’s about Jaha.”

“Oh,” he said, some of the emptiness evaporating. “Jaha.”

His eyebrows raised a fraction, but she doubted he’d figured it out. She was firmly convinced that if her car hadn’t broken down and she hadn’t invited him to dinner, they never would have so much as kissed. He would have been respectful, kept his distance. They might have developed a warm friendship. But it had been her to push it, to take her hands and mold this into what it was. And it was a beautiful thing, colorful, passionate, a prized piece in her heart's display case.

She just hoped this news wasn’t enough to break it.

“I’d probably rather not talk about it at all, then,” he added. His tone was light, but there was a heaviness in his eyes. Because Jaha had fired him from the job he truly loved – forced him to move across the state from the kids he’d bonded with and taken pride in. Thelonious Jaha was likely the last thing he wanted to talk about, too.

“Well, we don’t _have_ to talk about it now,” she said, holding out her hand as a kind of peace offering. Now that he knew she wasn’t going to drop a breakup bomb on him, maybe he’d react differently. And he did, finding her fingers again and interweaving them with his.

“Later,” he said. It was an agreement, a kind of promise, and the dread wasn’t completely gone. But one way or another, she’d have to tell him – because her problems were his problems and vice versa, the weight on her chest was weighing him down, too. So there was really only one thing she could say, one thing that would chase away those ghosts that lurked over his broad shoulders.

“Later.”

Her phone vibrated again, the sound of a fly buzzing in the bag that leaned against her hip, and she rolled her eyes. Of all the nights to have a sudden surge in popularity…

“Should you get that?” he asked, and Abby shook her head.

“I don’t think it’s anything important,” she said. “Clarke or Raven would call me, and you’re here. I don’t think there’s anyone else who would be trying to get ahold of me right now.”

“Are you sure?” Marcus asked, skeptical. “You can take it, Abby. I don’t mind.”

“No,” she said, a little more firmly than she’d intended. “I’m not doing this right now.” _Whatever it is, it can wait._

“All right,” he said, figuring it was best to give her the option if she wanted it. “If it’s Clarke, tell her I say hello.”

Abby smiled at him and at her purse in turn, considering the chances that the buzzing indeed belonged to her daughter. Would she even have service in the middle-of-nowhere campground the kids were visiting? Would she be allowed to have her phone during those dubious “team bonding” exercises that had damn well better be chaperoned by someone over the age of eighteen? She hadn’t texted her thus far this weekend – much to her mother’s chagrin – and her brain rather enjoyed providing her with five-second horror stories revolving around reasons why she hadn’t heard from her daughter.

If she wanted to, she knew she could talk to Marcus about it: he wouldn’t tell her she was overreacting. But then he’d tell her to answer her phone, and that would drive a wedge through their conversation and the gentle, dreamlike quality of their evening. For all intents and purposes, she was stuck between a plethora of rocks and hard places. She arrived at the decision that even if the texts were from Raven – God forbid, she was probably texting her to ask if she’d gotten laid yet – she’d send something Clarke’s way.

Returning to their conversation with a smile plastered over her pounding heart, Abby agreed that the night was much better without Thelonious Jaha interrupting them. Conversation flowed easier without the sword of discovery and eternal shame hanging over their heads, and she thought his smile seemed lighter, less distracted. Now that they didn’t have to worry about anything – well, other than that damn distance – it was easier to act like nothing was wrong. For him, it was likely there really wasn’t anything on his mind other than her. For her, the Jaha reference had caught her off-guard and she was still trying to get her mind back on its feet.

_You have to tell him. You can’t keep going like this._

Then, _I’m not telling him now._

Then, _if you don’t tell him now, when are you going to do it? You know he’s going to do anything to get out of watching that movie._

She could have laughed. The thought of Marcus Kane, in all his awkwardly glorious allure, was rarely the one to do the seducing. But if he were that desperate to get out of seeing Titanic…well, it might happen.

It was decided, then: she’d tell him before they were nested comfortably on whatever furniture he had – God, she hoped there was a couch half as comfortable as the one in his apartment – before she had a chance to rest her head on his shoulder and he the opportunity to pull her close. She’d tell him the second they set foot in his apartment, before he had the chance to kiss her or hold her or do whatever was running through his head when he looked at her like she was one of his favorite books.

He had to know. He had a right to know.

Her stomach growled, a soft, gurgling sound, and she jolted back to reality.

Wandering the campus today had been a more than adequate distraction from her mounting hunger, but without her past to distract her gnawing sensation became unbearable. Thankfully, she didn’t have long to wait. Their meals arrived soon enough, coated in Parmesan cheese with a side of garlic bread, and it took every ounce of restraint in her body not to dive into the meal like a ravenous college kid.

She took her first bite within seconds of the plate being set in front of her, past the point of caring whether or not she burned her tongue. Marcus, the more sensible of the pair, opted to wait a bit and let his pasta cool. He wanted to be able to taste the popcorn when they watched this three-hour long behemoth of a movie, after all.

She noticed he wasn’t eating at the same time he noticed she was, and twin smiles appeared on their faces.

“Hungry?” he asked, and her smile turned a bit guilty. Not that Marcus would care about her table manners, but…at the moment, they were leaving something to be desired. A few things, in fact.

“A little,” she said after swallowing, her tongue burning. The sauce had a kick to it – a simmering flame of a spice – and if this was what homemade pasta sauce was like, she didn’t want it. At all.

Trying her best to be casual she reached for her wine, hoping it would allay the blaze spreading in her mouth. Unfortunately, the tart, dry beverage did nothing of the sort, and even when she set it down the inferno was brighter than ever. _Dammit._

With some small satisfaction, she noticed Marcus had begun eating. At least her misery would have company.

So she waited for him to react, wondering when it would hit him. Granted, it had taken a few seconds for her, and if he was half the culinary expert she suspected he was he’d have experience with these types of things. But unlike him, her order of Broccoli Chicken at their local Chinese restaurant didn’t come soaked in Sriracha.

“Definitely homemade,” he said after a few moments of consideration, staring off into the distance with eyes glazed over. “Wonderful.”

Abby’s jaw dropped.

“You don’t think it’s spicy?”

Marcus frowned. “You _think_ it’s spicy?”

“My mouth is on fire, Marcus,” she nearly panted, wishing the waiter had brought them some water with their wine. What kind of place didn’t bring them water, too? “So yes, I think it’s a little spicy.”

Marcus stared at her blankly for a few moments, absorbing her words and responding with overt empathy. “I guess it has a little kick to it, but it’s not too bad.”

Abby glared at him, sensing she wouldn’t be hearing the end of this once they left the restaurant. “You’re making it worse, Kane.”

“Doubtful,” he smirked. The use of his surname was a private joke to them now, a thing that made them both smile, and his grin widened a few molars when he heard it. A tiny part of her brain not devoted to registering her agony thought there was a beautiful irony in that.

The waitress – an angel if Abby had ever known one – seemed to notice her suffering and brought them both glasses of water without request. As she savored the cool liquid on her tongue, she thought the girl deserved a damn good tip. Which Marcus was _going_ to let her leave, although he insisted – even after a ten-minute bickering session - on paying for their meal.

Her table manners tossed into the wind, Abby almost chugged the entire glass. When she was finished she set it down on the table with a dull _thunk_ , regarded her companion with exasperation.

“If all homemade sauce is like this, I’m sticking to my own recipe. Which is a bottle of Prego.”

“It’s not,” he reassured her hurriedly, his plate giving off wisps of steam as he twirled sauce-coated noodles around his fork. Abby strayed into safer territory, picking up a piece of garlic bread and praying there weren’t any hidden spices in that. “I use my mother’s recipe. Believe it or not, I couldn’t handle spice very well when I was younger.”

His tone turned wistful and she froze with the bread to her lips, her lips slightly parted, ready to take a bite as she smelled the salty, buttery aroma it exuded. But this was the first time Marcus had mentioned his mother in over a month, since the night before he had to leave. Was he getting more comfortable talking about her? Abby hoped so, because she’d done a little research of her own.

Vera Kane was on Facebook, after all.

So Abby had learned everything and nothing at all about her, reading up on a woman who lived twenty minutes away from her and taught Sunday School at one of Arkadia’s churches. She thought she’d seen her around before, passed her on the street without any depth of recognition, wouldn’t have made a connection between the bright, cheerful woman and her son if her life depended on it. Maybe now she could see it, but before? There was as much resemblance between the two of them in personality as there was between her and Charles Pike. Which was to say, none at all.

And a few times she’d come close to hitting send on a message it took her a few hours to write, her cursor hovering over a box she’d never click. And she’d listen to the droning hum of her outdated computer monitor, wondering what Marcus would say if he found out, wondering if this fell under the category of “caring about his well-being” or, more likely, “hellishly overreaching.” But the woman in the pictures didn’t seem the type to disown her son, and Abby suspected Marcus had disowned her to some extent. She wouldn’t press him for details, but the ability to read her like a book went the other way, too: she could tell in his eyes and tone that he missed her. And what child with a kindhearted, caring parent wouldn’t?

Just another thing she wouldn’t say, but a message she thought she might send.

They talked between sips of water and bites of pasta, Abby drafting her message to Vera Kane in order to guide her mind away from other, less pleasant conversation topics. She thought she heard her phone buzz one more time but left it go, uncertain whether what she was hearing was a product of her imagination or the incessant flaming spices or both.

Marcus wouldn’t so much as show her the bill, insisting it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. His Polis apartment proved that, but it didn’t stop her from yanking it from his hands across the table, catching him unaware and barely managing to keep both water glasses upright.

“Abby,” he said, sounding resigned, as if chastising himself for not thinking of her possible response until it was already happening. “Please give it back.”

“Not a chance.”

Her Visa card did the trick quite nicely, and he grumbled something about being allowed to leave the tip.

Then, one $10 bill from her purse later – no, he wasn’t leaving the tip, no matter how convinced he’d been that she’d allow him to do it – they were back out on the bustling Trikru streets. Her hand fit in his like a jigsaw puzzle, keeping her warm as the chilly night turned their breaths into silvery, wispy clouds. They strode beneath storefronts and along roads to get back to their cars, broke their contact to slip between tiny crowds of college kids out on the town, came back together and held each other even tighter.

“It’s a nice night,” Marcus remarked, and Abby had to laugh.

“It’s twenty degrees,” she responded, her nose burning red with the cold. Had it always been this frigid here?

He stopped walking next to a glowing lamplight, looked at her with that look again. That look that made her heart skip beats and her soul sigh, and for a flicker of a second she contemplated yanking him down into a kiss. But there were too many people buzzing around them, too many people making their way toward whatever awaited them on Saturday night, and the last thing she wanted was a romantic moment stained by some college kid’s irksome comments.

“Just because it’s twenty degrees,” he said, his gaze sliding down to her lips, “doesn’t mean it’s not a nice night.”

_To hell with it._

She leaned in, throwing her purse over her shoulder to slide her hands up his arms and into his soft, silky hair. They were one person, sharing the same breath, their mouths almost, _almost_ close enough to touch, her eyelids slowly closing, when…

_Buzz!_

And Marcus stiffened, his amused exhale sending warmth across her lips as she angled forward on impulse.

“You should really answer that,” he said, and this time it wasn’t a question. Whoever this was had been texting her all night. Clearly, something needed to be addressed.

 “If it’s Raven, I’m going to-“

“Tell her I say hello?” Marcus finished, stepping away to give her some privacy.

“That wasn’t what I had in mind,” Abby said, fishing around through layers of old receipts and sorting through spare change to reach the glowing object. Unceremoniously she yanked it from her purse, pressed her finger to the button on the side to alight the barely-dimmed display. The brightness of the glow made her wince at first, but the longer she looked the more sense it made.

When Abby looked back on that moment, months later, it occurred to her that what happened next could be broken down into segments. Fractions of moments in which different things occurred to her at different times, when everything fell into place and out of place in one glowing, shining, eruption of a minute.

First, it was from Octavia. A Facebook message. Highly forbidden, considering Arkadia’s policies didn’t allow social media contact between teachers and students until after they graduated. But in the sea of rule-breaking in which they were swimming, Abby wasn’t going to bat an eyelash at one message.

Second, there wasn’t just one message. There were at least five of them, one from Octavia, one from Clarke ( _Clarke_!), one from Bellamy, one from Jasper, one from Monty.

Third, as she scrolled through them she saw they all read the same thing, most only two words long – well, except for Clarke, who offered an apology for the radio silence.

Fourth, she read the first one out loud. She hadn’t even really meant to, but her lips moved before her brain did and her body gave her no choice.

“Jaha’s resigning.”

Confused, she read it over again, certain that she must have missed something. Because what kind of heartless asshole fired a man as devoted to his school as Marcus, only to turn around and leave a month later? Would he resign just to make their lives hell, to release the footage? Two months ago, Abby would’ve said Thelonious Jaha wasn’t that kind of man. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

“Jaha’s _resigning_ ,” she read again, looked up hesitantly at Marcus, whose expression had been wiped blank. And that one word, that one simple word seemed to echo for miles like a gunshot, its implications reverberating off the brick walls of the quaint little downtown buildings and knocking the air out of their lungs.

“So,” he said, his tone unreadable, his jaw clenched. “Jaha’s resigning.”


	22. Of Unexpected Resignations

The drive back from the restaurant was quiet, the only sound in Marcus Kane’s car coming from the gentle hiss of the heater. He couldn’t even bring himself to turn on the radio. An incapacitating numbness had spread from his brain to his limbs to his heart, and those two simple words kept bouncing around his head like a confusing, sickening echo.

_Jaha’s resigning._

He should have been happy. The last obstacle to their relationship had been removed...in theory. He should have been blaring the radio, grinning from ear to ear, smiling at each person he drove by. Instead, he felt a ball of dread forming in his stomach. If Jaha were a good man, he could allow himself to be happy. But Thelonious Jaha was not a good man.

Marcus glanced in his rear-view mirror, made sure Abby was still following him in the car he’d – well, Raven – had fixed only a few months ago. He couldn’t see her face any more than she could see his, both of them shrouded in darkness and confusion and dread. He didn’t have to see her to know how she looked. He knew.He’d seen it all in her eyes from the moment she looked up at him – the uncertainty, the disbelief, the fear. Never had there been a bigger question mark in the history of their relationship.

Parking perfectly between the lines in the lot behind his building, he tried to keep a straight face when Abby pulled into the spot next to him. There was a fiery, aching part of him that wanted to pound the steering wheel and scream until his throat went raw, until his voice was hoarse and there were tears streaming down his face. If he were alone, perhaps he would have. It would have felt cathartic, fitting, to get some of those roiling emotions out into the open air.

Because this wasn’t how tonight was supposed to go – not even _slightly_ – and every time they thought they had something, that they’d grown this into something that couldn’t be touched or destroyed by anyone else’s careless hands, the universe came along and tore it from the ground. Their relationship was a storm that never quite blew over, a scrape that never fully healed. And no matter how hard they tried, it seemed like they’d never escape that.

He stepped out of the car a little too quickly, wincing as his feet collided with the rock-hard, cracked pavement. Abby was already out of her car and making her way around his, picking up her pace when she heard the sound he made.

“Are you okay?” she asked softly, hesitant in a way she hadn’t been since the Monday after they’d gotten drunk together. The question wasn’t just intended to cover his fractional fall, but that was all he’d address at the moment. Everything else was a scab waiting to be peeled off his skin for the second time, this new job a bandage that did nothing to help him heal.

Ironic, he thought, that he should hear that tone again now. Considering what they were about to discuss again.

“I’m fine,” he said, doing his damnedest to sound convincing. His heart shattered when he looked at her – her brown eyes wide, her fingers trembling as she reached for him to…to what? To make sure he was, indeed, fine? He hadn’t been fine since she avoided talking about Jaha. Not that he suspected her of anything, because he didn’t. But something was bothering her, and it bothered him that she wouldn’t tell him what it was.

Her hand froze a millimeter from his, and she withdrew it without saying a word; withdrew it as if some invisible force field had propelled her back into her own physical space. And he wanted to reach for her, too. He wanted to hold her and run his fingers through her hair and tell her everything was going to be okay, that Jaha resigning might not mean anything for them except that their lives were going to get a lot easier from here on out.

But Marcus Kane knew better. And, judging by the stiffness in her back and the anxiety in her eyes, so did Abby Griffin. He realized too late that part of her reaction might have been because he’d thrown her own words back at her – _I’m fine –_ but there was nothing to be done about it now.

“We should go inside,” he said, his words numbing him like he’d been injected with Lidocaine. And he hated this, hated every minute of it, but that familiar nagging sensation was starting to creep up on him again. That murmuring in the back of his mind, the bubbling pot of guilt in his stomach.

_Your fault. It’s your fault._

_If anything bad happens, it’ll be your fault._

_If she can’t find another job after this, it’s your fault._

_You never deserved her._

He let her go inside first, holding his burgundy-painted door open as she stepped carefully over the gap between the concrete and his apartment. He’d warned her about the ledge, but they’d both been so preoccupied that he thought he might have only ended up advising the open air and the bugs that buzzed around his streetlight.

Following behind with his knees still smarting, he closed the door, offered to take her coat, and hung it on the back of the door. The bright red wool felt oddly scratchy without her inside it.

“You have a nice place,” she observed, turning in a circle to get the full view; or, as full as she could while standing in the narrow entryway. She almost brushed against the back of him as she rotated, so cramped were his conditions.

Since he’d had to come in mid-year most of the “ideal” housing units had been filled, but Indra said of his meager options that this – a half-filled apartment complex at the very edge of Trikru’s surrounding township – would be the best. It didn’t hold a half of a candle to his apartment in Polis, but it was better than sleeping in his car. Or, even worse, imposing on Indra.

“I guess it’s not bad, for moving here in February,” he said, and she glanced at him with eyebrows raised. Confusion. If he’d had a quarter of his brain that hadn’t been decimated by that bombshell of a news item, he would’ve remembered that Abby Griffin had no clue how things worked in a college town. Unfortunately, his mind wasn’t offering him much in the way of a coherent explanation.

She was so beautiful, even in the flickering light from the single bulb dangling above their heads. Her hair was the copper of an old penny – a penny that had survived a barrage of hardships and lived to tell the tale – a penny that came out the other side stronger.

She’d worn the shirt she’d been wearing the day her car broke down, a gray sweater that accentuated her every curve without being too breathtakingly tight, although he doubted she remembered it as anything but another piece in her wardrobe. And for a moment as she looked away, taking in their surroundings, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but stare. Absorbing this image of her, here, breathtaking and brokenly angelic and brave. It wasn’t perfect, given their circumstances, but he’d long given up on chasing perfection.

_You don’t deserve her._

“Where do you want to sit?” he asked as they made their way toward the heart of his new space. “The couch is open, or there’s a kitchen table that I don’t use.”

She gave a tiny, halfhearted laugh that only made the guilt burn brighter.

“Well, if you don’t use it, I’d say we should try the table,” she said, the heels of her boots colliding with the linoleum on his kitchen floor and making sounds that echoed throughout his apartment. “Make sure it gets some use.”

“I agree,” he said, knowing fully well he wasn’t going to argue with her on the pale reserves of energy left in his being. They took their seats across from each other at the circular wooden disk, tags still dangling from the leg nearest him. He hadn’t even bothered to take them off.

“So,” Abby said, taking a deep, rattling breath, leaning against the table just enough to make it groan. “Jaha.”

“Jaha,” Marcus repeated, words failing him.

“Marcus, I didn’t know he was resigning until tonight. If I had, I would’ve told you as soon as I knew.”

He blinked, her statement unexpected. Of all the things that had crossed his mind on that lonely twenty-minute drive back home, the idea that she might have been keeping something from him hadn’t made an appearance.

“I know,” Marcus said, wondering if the lighting in his apartment had always been this atrocious. It was only 8 o’clock, but he could hardly see her over the shadows swarming her face and the yellowish hue of the globe light. No, he wouldn’t be living here next year. That much was for certain, if he were here next year at all.

“When I mentioned Jaha at the restaurant, this wasn’t what – I didn’t – there was something else I wanted to talk about,” she said. And in that moment, hearing her words come out as a jumble and her usually-confident expression slip, Marcus could finally put a name to how he was feeling. To where all those emotions and signals were pointing.

Terror.

Marcus Kane was terrified.

She wasn’t usually shaken like this without good reason. He’d seen Abby Griffin angry, Abby Griffin determined, Abby Griffin happy, Abby Griffin in love. But in their months of knowing each other and their time together, he hadn’t seen her like this. He hadn’t seen her so hesitant, so timid, shrinking under the light like a leaf in a fall wind.

What was she going to tell him?

“When you brought up the time he met us at the restaurant…there’s more to that story than I told you,” she said. Abby paused for a moment, looked directly in his eyes, and even in the hazy darkness her uncertainty was palpable. It was as solid between them as a wall, dividing them like a barrier, and he wished he could reach out and tear it down.

But he couldn’t. The restaurant had made that apparent enough. He had to let her keep going, see where her tale was headed, and hope the destination was harmless enough.

“When you asked me to go to dinner with you, he interrupted us,” she said, and he nodded in assent. Marcus remembered, mostly because he remembered being concerned for her. Wondering if Jaha was going to fire her, use the security footage against her. What precious little he’d known back then. “But I never told you what he said to me. Marcus, he asked me out. To TonDC. On the same night.”

Marcus felt himself inhale sharply, heard the sound of breath rushing against the back of his throat. And again, of all the things that could have come out of her mouth…this was perhaps the last thing he’d expected. And he’d thought of everything.

In hindsight, he couldn’t say he was surprised. Abby was…well, Abby. She had a gravitational pull that was almost inescapable, an alluring vitality that would’ve made the strongest man weak. Marcus would be the first to admit he was biased, but truthfully, it made sense.

He swallowed hard, preparing himself to respond to her statement, but she kept going before he could interrupt.

“I said no, of course,” she said. “Thelonious and I had been friends for years, but he’s not you, Marcus. I didn’t want to be with him, and I never will. But I don’t think it was as simple as saying ‘no’ and moving on with our lives. I think –“

Her voice cracked and she tucked a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear that immediately fell back into her eyes.

“When you were fired, I should have gotten fired with you,” she said, her voice trembling like an earthquake. “And the more I think about it, the more I think there was a reason he didn’t let me go. When I kissed you in front of my eighth-hour class, I was trying to-“

“You were trying to get yourself fired,” Marcus added, the pieces finally falling into place. Why she hadn’t wanted to tell him. Her emotional distance at the restaurant, as though she were miles away from him when they sat across the table. The way she was fighting back tears now. And there were a few different reasons why he could be angry, he knew.

  1. She’d tried to get herself fired for him. There was no way in hell he’d let her do that, and she understood. The thought of her getting fired from a job she loved just to be with him…it made his stomach sick. Abby Griffin couldn’t go back to working at the hospital just because he’d been enough of an idiot not to stop her from pouring that drink.
  2. There was an excellent chance that he’d been fired not just for his conduct – which admittedly, he still felt he deserved – but because he was an obstacle in Thelonoius Jaha’s path to Abby Griffin. That set a blaze of anger burning in his chest, but not at her; she couldn’t control what Jaha did. Of all the times to resign, he could hardly believe he’d fired him a month ago and was he himself leaving now. Nothing made sense. It was as though they’d fallen down the rabbit hole, into a world where up was down and down was up.



Abby took a deep breath, looking as though a gigantic weight had been lifted off her tiny shoulders. For God’s sake, had she been carrying this around with her for a whole month? Why hadn’t she trusted him with it sooner? Did she really think he was going to be angry at her?

Truthfully, that sentiment bothered him more than the entire Jaha story.

“He still comes around even though you left, which is an annoyance,” she said, some vigor returning to her voice. “But I can handle Jaha. What I couldn’t handle was you not knowing the whole story. I didn’t want you to think you were fired just because of that security tape.”

After the first part of her sentence, the whole room went silent.

_He used to come around even after you left._

“Abby,” he said, his voice solemn. “Have you told him you want him to leave you alone?”

She frowned, her delicate eyebrows drawing together in the golden light.

“Yes,” she said, clearly not expecting the conversation to go in the direction Marcus was steering it. But he was all but seeing red now, the thought of Thelonious Jaha still coming after her when she’d made it clear she _didn’t want him_. He’d made their lives hell in the weeks after what happened during the snowstorm.

Why did he have to continue making her life hellacious? For God’s sake, what was he thinking when he fired _him_? _If I get rid of Marcus and she still doesn’t want me, I’ll resign?_

“He hasn’t forced himself on me or anything, Marcus. I don’t have a high opinion of him, but I know he wouldn’t do _that_. The most he does is just come into my room after school and talk. It’s obnoxious, but I can-“

“We should go to administration,” he blurted, unable to hold it back any longer. She deserved better than that. And even though he was resigning now, Marcus Kane could make sure he didn’t walk away with a clean record. Hell, he didn’t deserve it. “Someone needs to know about this, Abby.”

She was quiet for a few moments, staring at him with wide eyes, her mouth a thin red line.

“How would we bring it to administration, Marcus?” she asked, her voice too even, measured, to sound natural. Her tone was robotic, removed, as though she’d come to a calculated conclusion and hated the answer. “For all we know, he’s planning to leak the footage. Once he’s gone, it won’t reflect on him anymore.”

“Someone would have to listen to us,” he reasoned, desperate. Maybe they wouldn’t listen to him, depending on the reason Jaha gave for his firing. But Abby? They’d listen to Abby. Everyone always listened to Abby. “The school board. The superintendent. Someone, _dammit_!”

Abby blinked at his exclamation, surprised at his tone. He realized it once the word was out of his mouth: this was the first time she’d heard him yell. It wasn’t at her, not really, but he couldn’t help the wave of regret that washed over him. Things were supposed to be so very, _very_ different. And yet here they were, having the same goddamn conversation they’d had a month ago, just with different words and in a different setting.

“Marcus, we can’t tell anyone,” Abby insisted. “Not until we know what he’s doing.”

Now it was his turn to frown, gaping at her from across the dusty kitchen table.

“How would we find out what he’s doing?” he asked. “You’d ask him? After everything he’s put you through? I won’t-“

“Don’t tell me you won’t _‘let’_ me, Marcus,” she snapped, her voice turning icy in an instant as her eyes flashed. “Octavia has a plan.”

“Octavia Blake?” Marcus asked. She nodded. “Abby, don’t tell me you’re involving the kids in this.”

“I’m not,” she said, her frown deepening. “She came up to _me_. She thinks she can erase it, Marcus. Everything can go back to the way it was.”

If there was one thing Marcus Kane knew for certain, it was that nothing was going back to ‘the way it was.’ Because he still wouldn’t be working at Arkadia, and Jaha was still resigning for whatever strange reason, and Abby was still sitting across from him with fire in her eyes and a storm in her voice. And this was new, too, although not a premiere experience: he’d heard this tone before. He’d seen this expression before. This whole night was like a perverse episode of déjà vu, throwing him back into a past he never wanted to experience again.

“Don’t get the kids involved, Abby,” he said, fighting his natural instinct to run across the table and pull her into his arms. “I don’t want them to be punished. Not for mistakes I made.”

She glared at him, her look enough to turn him to stone.

“They’re not _just_ your mistakes,” she said. “I think you’ve forgotten that I was on that couch in Miller’s room, too. If anyone’s to blame here, it’s me!”

He opened his mouth to apologize, to make a feeble attempt at allaying the churning sea of remorse in his heart, but she kept going.

“I’m just trying to figure out a solution. Because if we do something Jaha doesn’t like-“

“He’d release it,” Marcus finished for her, resigned as the truth dawned on him. “Because it doesn’t reflect on him anymore.”

_Damn._

And once again, it all came back to that damn footage. If he released it, the best possible scenario was that they’d both get fired.

And that guilt in his stomach had reached its boiling point, and his head was spinning and his hands were gripping the edges of his seat beneath the table with knuckles gone white. His pulse was a war drum and he could feel the blood rushing in his ears, a combination of rage and regret he hadn’t felt since hearing the fatal _crunch_ of that sparkly barrette against his shoe. Not even his firing, he thought, could measure up to this.

No matter what they did, no matter how hard they tried and how much they loved each other, they went to bed in each other’s arms with the sword of Damocles dangling over their heads. That footage was always going to be out there, waiting in the shadows to strike them unaware. Their relationship, it seemed, had an expiration date. And now that Jaha was gone from the school, it had moved closer.

Marcus couldn’t keep doing this to her.

_She deserves better._

“Abby,” he said, talking through a lump of remorse in his throat and doing his best to blink away the burning sensation in his eyes.

If he was out of the picture, she could live her life in peace. Jaha wouldn’t come after her, and he was 99 percent certain he wouldn’t release the footage, either. Why would he? There would be nothing to get revenge _against_ , assuming he wasn’t hell-bent on ruining her life (which he doubted he was). It would be better for her this way.

_You have to do this. All you do is hurt her, and she deserves someone who won’t come with a warning label._

So why did he feel like he was dissecting his own heart?

“I think it might be best if we…at least until this blows over…”

Her expression changed, stunned confusion replacing rage.

“What are you saying?”

“I don’t know!” he exclaimed, emotions getting the better of him as he stared at her from across the polished oak. Her face was blank, pale, her arms crossed and her eyes flashing. He might not have said it, but he might as well have.

And that was the thing about words: they were permanent.

“Well, what do you want?” she asked, her voice low. He saw her Addams apple bob in her throat, knew she was fighting the same emotions he was.

This wasn’t what he wanted – not by a wide, wide margin.

What he wanted was to hold her close for a thousand years, to stroke the waterfall of her brown hair, to tell her everything was going to be alright when he knew it wasn’t.

What he wanted was to go to sleep with her and wake up next to her in the morning, to cook her banana crepes every day and teach her how to make pasta sauce.

What he wanted was to sit next to her and grade papers together, to find some meaning in the banality of everyday life just from being by her side.

What he wanted was to be next to her, to hear the sound of her voice, to cherish her laugh and her smile for the rays of sunlight they were against the cruel darkness of the world around them.

But the universe was consistent in one thing: it never let him have what he wanted. So he said the only thing that drifted through the nightmare in his head, the only truth in the sea of lies that bubbled forth from his tongue.

“I want you to be happy,” he whispered, barely able to look at her as his voice shook.

“No,” she said, her voice as firm as his was weak. And it annoyed him a little, just a little, that she could be so unflinching. That he could be sitting across the table from her, coming undone piece by piece in a wooden chair that made his every muscle ache, and she could be so unfazed by it all. Did she even really care? Was this what she expected from the second Jaha’s name had left his lips, and had she been preparing for it since they left the restaurant?

“If that was what you wanted, you’d help me figure something out, _Kane_. You wouldn’t just give up!”

“There’s nothing to _figure out_ , Abby,” he said, stunned into anger by her use of his surname. It wasn’t cute this time. It wasn’t funny. It was a slap in the face, a punch to the groin, a twist of a knife inside his already bleeding heart. “We can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep watching you be happy and realizing that any second, we could be watching a news broadcast of what happened during the snowstorm. I can’t do that to you. I lo-“

“ _Don’t_ ,” she snapped, glowering, standing up abruptly and shoving the chair into the table with enough force to send it colliding into his chest. The air knocked out of his lungs and the room spinning like a top, he barely heard her over the ringing in his ears. “The only thing you love is your guilt, Marcus.”

Barely strong enough to turn his head, he watched her grab her red jacket from the back of the door and slam it with enough force to shake the foundations of his building. And all the while that guilt roared inside him, sent tears streaming down his face as he put his head in his hands and tried to convince himself this whole thing had been one horribly long nightmare.

He loved her.

Marcus loved Abby Griffin with everything he had, with every beat of his heart, with every tear that fell.

He loved her enough to let her go.

And when he threw open the door to his apartment, not bothering to throw on shoes or a jacket, it was that phrase that burned a hole in his tongue. It wasn’t the one he’d say to her – trying to patch things up now would take more stitches than all the thread in his mother’s sewing kit could have provided – but maybe he could do something. Say something. Convince her that she was wrong, that he loved her more than she could ever know, that even uttering those words had torn him apart straight down to his core.

Because a life without her was no life at all. It was the Earth without the Sun, a rain without thunder, lungs without air. It was a pool without water, a dusk without a dawn, a darkness with no light.

When he looked out into the moonlit night, she was gone.

 

***

Abby remembered the last time she’d cried like this.

It hadn’t been during Jake’s funeral – no, there she tried to be professional, modest, putting on a brave mask for her daughter and the hundreds of people who came to his service. Jake would have expected that of her – that bravery, that determination – and she could imagine him shaking his head, telling her she needed to let it out.

He also would have expected what came next, the night after the funeral.

Clarke had closed herself in her room, unwilling to talk to her, unwilling to eat. Abby offered to make her favorite food – marinara pasta – but they both knew damn well there was no force on the planet that could get either one of them to step a toe into the kitchen that night. So Clarke remained silent and Abby remained downstairs, doing battle with the army of swirling feelings that slowly, hour-by-hour, dismantled every one of her defenses and threatened to capture her.

But she couldn’t let it out here. Not in front of her daughter, the one person as shaken by the absence of him in their house, the lack of his laughter, the hole in her heart where his smile used to be. She couldn’t let Clarke see that, not when she was fighting her own battles. But the scent of the funeral home was on her coat, in her hair, in her skin, and she couldn’t sit here any longer without screaming at the barrage of unwelcome memories. She had to do something. Anything.

So, under the guise that she was going to the grocery store, Abby climbed in her car and drove.

Realistically, she knew there were colors. The freeway signs were supposed to be green. The lines on the highway were supposed to be yellow. The cars whizzing past her were supposed to be green, blue, red, orange. But without him, it all looked as though someone had converted it to greyscale, taken the footage and turned it black and white. There was nothing colorful about a world without Jake Griffin.

She drove a few exits away – at least seven – down to a place where no one knew her. Where no one knew Clarke. Where there was no chance of discovery by an acquaintance who “just wanted to help,” who would try with their best intentions and a shaky smile to reassure her that she’d be alright. That they knew what she was going through. That no one could ever replace him, that he was one of a kind, that she’d always love him.

Abby knew all of that already. She didn’t need to be reminded. Right now, she only needed one thing, and as she pulled into the empty parking lot of a closed down supermarket she parked and waited for it to find her. Abby Griffin needed to cry.

But that was the funny thing about tears; when she tried to find them, they didn’t appear.

She sat in the car until the sun sank below the horizon, staring at the boarded up windows and shattered neon sign, waiting for her eyes to produce the things that would validate the emptiness tearing a hole in her chest. She thought about him, about her favorite things about him, about the way he couldn’t keep a tune when he sang and how safe she felt in his arms. She thought about how she’d never hear him sing again. She thought about how that safety wasn’t here anymore, how she’d never hear him call her ‘baby’ again.

Instead of crying, wailing, pounding the steering wheel, she sat in her car with her breath fogging the glass as the heat wore off and faded away. The winter air coiled around her and her lips remained a steady, unshaking line.

_Why can’t I cry?_

_What the hell is wrong with me?_

She jumped when she heard a knock on the glass, moved to lock her car doors and turn the key in the ignition. But when she saw her visitor – a kindly-looking older woman with dark brown eyes and a knitted hat pulled haphazardly over her short brown hair – she thought twice about speeding away without abandon. Unless she had a gun stowed somewhere in her rainbow-colored mittens, she wasn’t going to try to rob her.

So Abby turned on her car and rolled down her window, unable to muster even a confused frown.

“Ma’am?” the woman said, her voice carrying a warm-honey sweetness. She had no idea. “This grocery store closed a few months ago. If you’re looking for a place to get what you need, there’s a new one just down the street a bit.”

She smiled, ever a good Samaritan, her gaze radiating purity and hope. And Abby did the only thing her body would let her do, an instinctual reaction without a logical response.

She started bawling.

The woman, to her everlasting credit, didn’t immediately vacate the premises and stare at Abby as though she were an emotionally volatile mess of a woman (although, for honesty, that was how she felt). Instead she stepped closer, her tone sympathetic enough to be comforting but not sappy enough to be patronizing.

“Honey, if you needed something specific, they might have it down there,” she said. “It’s a lot bigger of a store. This little one just wasn’t getting the business it used to.”

Abby shook her head. “That’s not…” she paused, sniffled, wiped her dripping nose with the sleeve of her coat. “I’m not crying because of-“

The woman nodded, her brown eyes rife with understanding. “I see,” she said. “You weren’t going to buy groceries, were you?”

Her voice was soft as cashmere, warm as an embrace on a cold winter night. And Abby had thought she wanted to be alone, but now she thought she might have just wanted to get out of the house. Out of the place that held so many memories of him that it felt like asphyxiation, that she walked into and heard the sound of a flatline.

She shook her head again. No, she hadn’t had the slightest intention of buying groceries.

“I used to be the pastor at the church,” the woman said. “If you’d like to talk to someone about what’s troubling you, I can listen.”

Abby Griffin was not a religious woman. She hadn’t grown up in a religious family, and she and Jake had attended exactly one worship service before deciding organized religion wasn’t for them. Not that she didn’t believe in a higher power – she believed in something, and she had to believe her husband had gone to a better place because the alternative was too terrible to consider.

But the Griffins weren’t exactly a family that arose at 8 a.m. and took their seats in the chapel with Bibles in hand. And yet her body was doing things without the consent of her mind today, so instead of telling the woman goodnight and leaving she croaked, “Thank you.”

The hour that followed was more cathartic than any grief counseling session could have been, more profound than any discussion she could have had with Callie. This woman – whoever she was – was an excellent listener. Abby explained everything to her from start to finish; marrying Jake before she was out of college, how much she loved him and how quickly she’d lost him, how she felt guilty for finding it difficult to look at her daughter sometimes because she looked so, so much like him.

And the woman didn’t judge her.

She didn’t interrupt with religious jargon, didn’t tell her to leave it all to God. She mentioned Him once, just to say that Jake was with Him now, and that was it. But for the vast majority of the time she focused on Abby, told her she knew what it was like to lose a husband; that said, she hadn’t had quite the relationship with him that Abby had with Jake.

“You had something special,” she said in her hot chocolate voice, reaching over to take Abby’s hand in one of her own. “You can’t expect yourself to heal so quickly. It’s a process…”

“Abby.”

“It’s a process, Abby. And one day, all the things you mentioned will be fond memories. They won’t always hurt. But for a while, you have to let yourself feel the pain.”

At the time, she’d found that hard to believe. But she cried herself out with the woman in the passenger seat comforting her through her waterfall of tears, handing her tissues from the glove compartment when she needed them. And, at last, when her throat had gone numb and her eyes were puffy, the saltwater stopped flowing.

“Thank you,” Abby croaked again, regarding the woman with something like awe. In her years working at the hospital she’d grown to believe in the kindness of strangers: good people who kept hope alive for those who needed it most. But she hadn’t experienced it firsthand until that night, until this woman showed up with directions to a grocery store she had no intention of visiting.

“Of course,” the woman answered, her smile forming crinkles at the corners of her eyes and highlighting her laughter lines. “I’m happy I could help you, honey.”

Abby looked at the clock, realized how long it had been. Clarke would call her bluff – well, under normal circumstances she’d call her bluff, who knew what she’d do now – but at any rate, she felt the need to get home. No matter how she saw him everywhere she looked. So she told the woman she needed to go home, and she understood without further explanation.

And in all her rush to get back to Clarke, she’d forgotten to ask for the woman’s name. But now, driving home and seeing the exit was two miles away, it all came rushing back like the cars in her rearview mirror.

She didn’t know exactly how she knew, but that woman had been Vera Kane. How she’d managed to not make that connection until now, she wasn’t sure. The Facebook profile should have brought it back, shouldn’t it? But it didn’t. And her first happy memory since Jake’s passing was now tainted with Marcus, too.

On an impulse she took the exit to that familiar parking lot, turned her blinker on to go left. There was nothing logical within her to explain why she wasn’t just going home, calling it a night, collapsing in a bed where she knew sleep wouldn’t visit. Or maybe it was because of that sickening inevitability that she was delaying it, putting it off as long as she could.

The building wasn’t boarded up anymore, she noted as she pulled into the lot at 1 in the morning. It had been turned into a ballet studio, the windows tall and gleaming, the pink studio sign glowing beneath a fresh coating of snow. How was it, she wondered, that a building could reinvent itself so fully and yet she was trapped in the same damn position she’d been a year ago?

The circumstances were different, undoubtedly – most obviously, Marcus wasn’t dead – but he may as well have been. She’d lost him like she lost Jake. He wasn’t coming back. Because somehow, in that labyrinth of a mind of his, he honestly thought that breaking up with her was the only way she’d ever be happy. That leaving her would clear the path to that end goal, pushing aside obstacles like the snowplow that whirred past on the street as she pulled into the same spot (or at least, what she thought was the same one underneath the snow) and turned off the car.

And everything was haunted all over again now, the passenger seat of her car still gleamed with the ghost of him, her lips tingling from the echoes of the kisses she never should have given. Hadn’t she known, on some small level, that there was a possibility things could end this way? That he would choose his guilt over her? That he could be so convinced of his wrongdoings that he was blind to her forgiveness?

The worst of it was, she wasn’t even angry. Well she was, to a degree; her heart was pounding a mile a minute the same way it had when he said that fatal word – _can’t_ – but the five hours of drive time had boiled it down to emptiness, to a black hole in her chest where her heart used to be. What she felt was more a cool resignation, a sadness that lapped like ocean waves against her skin instead of crashing with rage.

She rummaged around in her purse for a moment, her fingers closing around the thing she’d been searching for. Her phone. And part of her hoped, although she knew it was foolish, that he’d been dumb enough to call her. That maybe he was as conflicted about what just happened as she was, in her own way. That maybe he’d taken it upon himself to try and fix things. She wasn’t above turning the car around, if he was convincing enough. Her pride could be swallowed: the loss of him was harder to choke down.

She pressed the center button and saw only the picture of her and Clarke, smiling eternally into the blackness of the night. _Well, that settles it, then._

Snow blanketing her dashboard and windshield in a coating of white, Abby Griffin was dead to the outside world. Any passersby would have seen an abandoned car in a dance studio parking lot, not the tiny woman huddled inside with her forehead resting on the steering wheel. That, she figured, was to her benefit. She wanted anonymity right now, wanted to process whatever this was on her own. She didn’t need Vera Kane to come to her son’s brown eyes and her son’s dark hair and tell her everything was going to be okay.

Because Marcus wasn’t Jake. These memories weren’t going to end up in a display case of her happiest times in her life, weren’t going to be prized possessions in her subconscious. When the time came, they were going in the trash can. Along with that burgundy shirt of his.

He’d loved her, sure. Just not enough to keep her. Not enough to try to work through things, not enough to choose her over whatever self-imposed victim complex dominated the entirety of his being. And that, that cold, callous realization – she wasn’t enough for him – was what drew the tears, dripping saltwater onto the Toyota logo and soaking into the tight fabric of her jeans.

He loved her enough to let her go.

She loved him enough to keep him close.

And maybe, she thought, those two different types of love were too volatile a mix to form anything other than an explosion.

With snow tumbling down from the heavens and the wind howling against her tiny little car, Abby Griffin cried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you wanna yell at me for this, my askbox is here: http://abbykomskaikru.tumblr.com/ask
> 
> *runs away and hides*


	23. Of Dreams and Secret Meetings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS ONE ISN'T GONNA BE AS SAD AS THE LAST ONE, I PROMISE. I swear it on my love for Kabby.

_**One month later** _

 

In his dreams, they were still together.

Marcus couldn’t count the number of times he held her, laughed with her, smiled at her, kissed her in that glowing land of soft twilight imagery. And every time, she was just as beautiful as he remembered; none of the anger he’d seen lighting her features the last time they spoke made the translation into his subconscious.

Her eyes were as warm as cinnamon, her kiss sweeter than hot chocolate. There was nothing that drew a smile to his lips quicker than the image of her glowing in the sunlight, her hair tossed gently by the breeze. There was no season in his dreams; nothing felt cold but nothing felt warm, either, and the only thing that drew sensation was her.

Warmth came from her, flushing through him like a firestorm from the moment their mouths met and her fingers slid into his hair. Cold came from her, too, shivers that crept down his spine when she slipped her fingers underneath his shirt and moaned against his lips. Anything that was worth feeling was hers, woven into her as intricately as thread in a blanket. Without her, everything was dark and numb.

She was elusive in a way that made the sheets twirl around his legs and beads of sweat form on his brow as he tried to catch her, his fists clenched as he strained to hold on to a fading memory that dimmed with every ounce of daylight. She was mist, slipping through his fingers as the dawn snuck up on him.

His brain may have ruined things for them, and this, he assumed, was its way of making amends. Atoning for its sins by sending him an echo of the woman who still had his heart. But if his brain was finally being kind to him for once in his 42 years, Marcus knew he’d made a horrible mistake.

A mistake he likely couldn’t repair.

 _“I love you, Marcus,”_ she said through that haze of half-wakefulness, her voice rich with emotion as her lips brushed against the pulse point of his neck. She was wearing a blue sundress that gathered around her waist and tied two triangles of shimmering fabric behind her neck, exposing the valley of skin between her breasts. Oh, how he longed to kiss her. To press his mouth to her skin until she knew, at least in this mirrored reality, how deep the well of his regrets ran. Until she knew how he despised himself for saying those awful words: _there’s nothing to figure out._

She had wanted him, and he’d thrown that wanting back in her face. And now if she wanted anything, it was likely only to be free of him. To never see him again. Worst of all, he wouldn’t blame her for that.

“ _I missed you so much,”_ she continued, radiating heat through the thin silk of her dress. Another way he knew this was a dream – his Abby would never have worn something so impractical, so flashy. But his brain gave him not reality, but desire. Not things he was likely to see, but things he wished to see. Phrases he yearned to hear.

So far, in each of the dreams the same three words had appeared without fail: _I love you._

Would she say those words now, if he drove to Arkadia, knelt down on his knees, and begged her forgiveness until his voice went hoarse? If he skipped work and jumped in the car and forgot everything that wasn’t Abigail Griffin, would she show him mercy? Not that he had any right to it. Not after what he’d done to her, not after what they’d shared just the night before. Breaking up with her like that was the worst thing he’d ever done in his life – save his mother, perhaps – his time at The Ark included.

Because at least at The Ark, there were ways to point fingers. To shirk away from the spotlight of blame, to transfer the weight of responsibility to someone else’s shoulders. His brain could deny the facts all it wanted, but he had been acting under orders from his boss, from the man he’d respected above all others. Simple orders were given and he followed them.

But with Abby, there had been no orders. No one called him into their office, sat him down in a thinly-padded chair and told him that if he didn’t break up with the woman he loved, thousands of people would lose their jobs in a month. It would have been easier to deal with, he thought, if someone had. If he could think of this through the lens of an order and duty, perhaps he could make peace with it.

Well, peace was a foreign term. A pipe dream. No peace could come from the surging pain in his chest every time his mind’s eye saw fit to send him a picture of her, her radiant smile, the way her gaze shone when she used to look at him. She’d looked at him like he was some luminescent thing, like he was both a shooting star and the answer to a wish she’d made on one.

Marcus knew one thing: stars burned out. He just hadn’t known he’d be the one to douse water on the light.

But for now he lived in a land separate from reality, his arms securing her against his chest as the sun glowed against a backdrop of the brightest blue and birds twittered cheerfully in the background. There was no breakup here, no heartache, no mistakes. There was just he and Abby, swaying gently back and forth as she rested her head on his shoulder and he pulled her closer.

After all, it was the closest he could come to holding her now.

 _“I love you too,”_ he murmured, reaching down to cup her chin and guide her soft pink lips to his. _“I’ll never leave you again.”_

***

 

Marcus awoke in a cold sweat, his legs plastered together by a sticky mixture of linen and saltwater. It took a minute to get his breathing under control – to stop seeing her when he closed his eyes – and it was only when his eyelids slid closed and he saw nothing but blackness that his aching muscles relaxed. Splayed out against the pillows with his arms wide and his legs all but attached to the sheets, the only coherent thought in his head was, _she’s gone. She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone._

He didn’t know if that was a comfort or a further descent into the nightmare.

With an exasperated sigh and a still-pounding heart, he turned to regard the alarm clock perched on a lopsided wooden table next to his bed. 3:30, the blinking red display read. He groaned. The dreams – or nightmares, depending on how he looked at it – tended to keep him in their thrall for longer than _that_. At this rate, he’d only get four hours of sleep on which he had to navigate a full workday (including his twice weekly office hours, at that).

Because that was the thing about the dreams: he never fell asleep after having them. They kicked his brain into a new dimension of desolation, began turning gears that were not easily paused. They came with an instinctive chain reaction of self-loathing and muted disgust, unforgettable memories of that night bubbling back to the surface after being shoved beneath the waves of work and life that somehow, impossibly, kept winding him up like a toy to make it through the day.

Wasn’t it supposed to get easier?

Sitting up and resting his head against the end of the wooden headboard, Marcus rubbed his eyes and yawned. No point in staying in bed if he wasn’t going to sleep. If insomnia claimed him as its own, he might as well not waste its time.

The brightness of his phone blinded him as he unplugged it from the wall, and he was surprised to see it still displayed the article he’d been reading before he drifted off. _Thelonious Jaha, former principal of Arkadia High, takes position at City of Light Enterprises._ Well, at least now he knew _why_ Jaha left. A meager form of closure.

As much as Marcus longed to call Abby, to make sure Jaha hadn’t done anything to her or threatened her, his fingers could only hover over that number. He could type it in, but when the time came to press the green button, to hear the sound of the ringing on the other end and – in his wildest dreams – the sound of her voice, he couldn’t do it. It was too much to risk, too much to ask of a shattered heart whose pieces had only started fitting together again.

So he closed the window, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and geared up for an early-morning run around campus. Maybe if he wanted to stop having nightmares, he thought, he should stop stirring up the ghosts of his past right before he went to sleep.

 

*** 

 

Hours later Marcus and Indra were strolling into the English building, underneath the watchful eye of two stone gargoyles, when Indra asked him the same question she’d been asking since the middle of March.

“Have you called her, Kane?”

Marcus gave her a sidelong look, having long stopped responding with indignation. Resignation, it seemed, was now his default response.

“She doesn’t want to hear from me,” he said a little too firmly. There were bags under his eyes and the hand holding his coffee trembled. He still hadn’t been getting sleep. While Indra knew he was a grown man who made his own decisions, she couldn’t help feeling concerned for him.

Indra gave him a glare that had no heat behind it; rather, it was an expression fueled by concern. She didn’t warm to many people, but Marcus Kane was one of the few she’d always known she could trust. He was an honorable man, and what he’d done to Abby – while heartbreaking – had only been an extension of that honor. A determination to do good, even if it meant cutting out his own heart.

She saw it that way. Marcus saw it another. But that didn’t mean she could sit idly by and allow her friend to sacrifice all the happiness he’d just found.

“How can you know that?” she said, matching his tone. She held her black coffee aloft as they wove their way through a pack of students, the kids muttering apologies with their headphones in.

Marcus kept his hands firmly in his pockets and his head down. He did a lot of that these days, she thought.

“Because I know her,” he said, an awkward pause between the third and fourth words in his sentence. Another thing he hadn’t done for the past month: he hadn’t been able to bring himself to say her name. “I don’t think she’d pick up the phone, Indra.”

“You’re assuming too much,” she said, bringing her coffee back to a reasonable level as they made their way past the herd. “She could be thinking the same thing about not calling _you_.”

He laughed, a bitter, breaking sound.

“We’ve talked about this,” he said, looked at the billboard with various student flyers as though he maintained some level of interest in the topics. Indra knew it for what it really was; a misdirection, a way to allay eye contact. “And I’d rather not talk about it again.”

They walked in silence for a bit, the conversation needing time to cool. Then, Indra decided she wasn’t going to let the subject drop. She’d done that too many times already, thinking it was for his own good. But his own good, she realized, was facing the problem head on. Not tilting sideways and walking through it with his head down and his hands in his pockets.

“You need closure,” she insisted, staring at him, daring him to disagree. “At least, you need to talk to her. You need to talk to Abby.”

She saw his jaw clench, his eyes close for a bit longer than just a blink.

“I don’t think that’s-“

She could see his office door at the end of the hallway, knew time was ticking. The moment had arrived to order the heavy artillery to fire, to wage battle on his troubling grief.

“What are you afraid of, Kane?” she asked, her voice carrying the edge of a sword. While emotions weren’t a specialty of hers – she’d been called callous, cold, unflinching – loyalty was. Once her loyalty had been won, Indra Grounder would wage war for any of her friends.

But this constant sulking, the self-imploding black hole of a man who had once been her friend…she couldn’t be loyal to that man. He bore only a resemblance in name to the Marcus she once knew, the Marcus who loved going for hikes in the woods and planting trees and reading poetry. The man who walked with her now was unrecognizable, a doppelganger in looks but not in heart. Where, she wondered, had he hidden the real Marcus Kane?

She couldn’t be loyal to this version of him, but she could be loyal to the man who was her oldest friend, the man who had found love and lost it and was having a horrible time picking up the pieces of the life he’d shattered with his own words.

“What’s the worst thing that could happen? Are you scared she won’t pick up? That she’ll ignore you? Then you’d have an answer,” she continued, relieved to see he was at least looking in her direction now. They were separated from his office by no more than 15 tiles, and she had less than ten seconds to make her point. “You can’t base your life around an assumption.”

Marcus stared at her, unblinking, his eyes filled with a concrete heaviness she’d never seen in him before. And there was irony in that Indra would have helped him shoulder that burden if she could – help lighten the load – but he was determined to carry it himself, to carry the blame until his spine cracked. Part of her knew she should have expected him to do that, and part of her was afire with rage at him for losing himself in such impracticalities.

He had two options. Either he could let it go and live the rest of his life never knowing, or he could do something about it. And thus far, living his life without knowing had meant living no life at all.

“I’m not afraid,” he said, barely whispering. Indra rolled her eyes.

“Bullshit,” she said. Five tiles. “If you weren’t afraid, you would have called her by now. Something’s stopping you from dialing that number.”

Four tiles. He looked at her again, the concrete churning in the depths of his soil-brown eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Indra. I don’t.”

Three tiles.

“And that’s working for you.”

Two tiles.

“It’s…”

He stopped, his voice shattering on that single syllable, and Indra felt a rush of emotion crash over her. Finally, a chink in the armor.

One tile until he reached his door.

“What, Kane?” she asked, doing her best to sound sympathetic instead of wholly, completely relieved.

“It’s not that I’m worried about her ignoring me,” he said as they came to a stop in front of his office. He began rummaging around in his coat pockets for the key, sifting through various conglomerated trinkets in an attempt to find the one thing he needed to begin his workday. His organization had suffered in Abby’s absence, too.

“Then what-“

“I’m worried about what’ll happen if she _doesn’t_ ,” he blurted, his fingers closing around the lukewarm metal and withdrawing it from his left pocket.

And with that, he shoved the key into the door until it clicked, turned it to the right, and flicked on the light. Indra, taken aback by his response, didn’t even have time to consider a retort before he told her,

“Have a good day, Indra. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He retreated behind the walls of his office and his mind, but Indra walked to her own quarters with a tiny smile. There was no joy in his suffering, but there was elation in the fact that she’d scaled those walls. She’d entered the fortress, and from here on out she could take down the army that was weakening him.

His stubbornness was no match for her resolve.

 

***

 

The papers, at least, weren’t trying to pick him apart layer-by-layer.

Marcus knew Indra meant well, but for the love of God, she was blunt. Perhaps she had to be. The nightmares weren’t getting better, his hours of sleep were still dwindling, and his concentration was hazy at best. As much as he found her methods dubious, at least she’d gotten him thinking.

Because truly, he wasn’t afraid of Abby ignoring him. Hell, he expected it. Abby Griffin giving him the cold shoulder was a scenario that played itself out in his head several times throughout the past month, to such a vivid extent that he could hear the soulless ringing of the cell phone on the other end. He could see her brown eyes flash with something – maybe rage, maybe detachedness, maybe fury - as she picked up the phone, clicked the icon that read ‘send to voicemail’ – and moved on with her life. After all, she had every right to do that. Sending him to voicemail was no less than he deserved, especially after the last things his voice had carried her way.

But her picking up the phone was a variable he found impossible to calculate, a situation for which he couldn’t prepare. Even the thought of hearing her voice, those sweet, gravelly tones that made his heart stop…it was enough to send the world spinning around him. And there was no way he’d be able to maintain a conversation when just the thought of talking to her affected him like this.

So he continued grading his students’ essays, his brain waging a war on his heart and his heart retaliating with cannonfire. The banana he’d eaten for breakfast wasn’t sitting well, and the bitterness of the coffee wasn’t doing much to wash it down. Not for the first time, he considered energy supplements. Weren’t they supposed to make it easier to get through the day? Or did they only last for five hours? He’d need more than that to make it through a 200-person lecture.

He might even need more than that to make it through these papers, he thought. By the fifth essay the text was blurry, and he reached for his glasses only to find they didn’t do anything to solve the problem. _Wonderful._ So insomnia was the culprit, then. Not so easy a fix when the woman he loved hid behind his eyelids every time they slipped closed.

_Idiot. You’re an idiot._

One of his most popular thoughts since last month.

A _ding!_ from his laptop startled him from his ruminations, and he looked down to see an email from one of his students asking when their essays would be graded. He bit the inside of his cheek and counted to ten slowly, deliberately, ignoring the churning in his stomach that told him the combination of overripe banana and coffee hadn’t been one of the best decisions he’d ever made.

They’d only turned in the papers last week. It was going to take him some time, given that he didn’t have a teaching assistant to help him like Indra did. Indra, of course, had offered her services but he turned her down. The last thing he needed was to get fired from this job.

Putting back his mask of propriety he opened the email fully, reading more than the first line. The first sentence was a question about the essays – that much he’d gleaned from the preview – but there was more to the message than he’d been able to see from the fraction the window displayed.

_Hello, Professor Kane!_

_I was just wondering when you think you’ll have our essays graded? I would really like to know where I stand before I start studying for the final._

Marcus snorted. In other words, they wanted to know how _much_ they needed to study for the final. Not that he hadn’t been guilty of that during his time, but he hadn’t had email to make it glaringly apparent where his thought processes unwound. If they were attempting to be subtle, they’d have to try a little harder.

But after that, the message took a turn for the unexpected.

_Also, a couple of my friends and I noticed you don’t seem to be doing great lately. I don’t want to overstep boundaries (please don’t dock me points for this) but we hope you’re okay._

_Thanks,_

_Macallan_

Marcus felt his heart swell in his chest, reminded of the times when his students at Arkadia would show concern for his well-being. It hadn’t happened often because it didn’t have to happen often; he had a solid immune system and tumbleweeds blowing through the barren wasteland of his personal life, so there was nothing much that held enough sway to affect him. Of course, this had been before…

Anyway.

He remembered vividly a winter when he’d gotten sick – really, truly sick – sick enough that he sounded as though he were holding his nose closed when he spoke. Medicine didn’t help it, sleep didn’t help it, and breathing through his nostrils remained a sweet, distant memory.

It had been years ago now, but he still remembered the girl who brought him a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, extracting it from her backpack at the end of class just after the bell rang. She told him she could tell he hadn’t been feeling well and hoped this would help him. And because this was years ago, he said he hoped she knew this wouldn’t have any boosting impact on her grade instead of thanking her.

She’d nodded and left, and Marcus had gone about his day well aware of how ridiculous he sounded. Foghorn sounds emitted from his nose every time he used a Kleenex, and as time marched on the can of chicken noodle grew more and more irresistible. To this day, it was one of the best dinners after work he’d ever eaten. And when he awoke in the morning he could breathe out of one nostril, which was admittedly a significant improvement.

By happy circumstance, her grade ended up as an ‘A’. He had no control over it – that was the way things turned out – but his comment on her report card was more under his jurisdiction. He chose a simple ‘thank you,’ hoping it would suffice as both a recognition of her achievements in class and of her kindness.

It did.

College students showing affection was an entirely different matter, and he hardly believed the sincerity the message implied. But he knew Macallan, the boy that sat in the front row and hummed songs as he took notes, and thought the chances of him sending a message like this just to bolster his already-solid A were slim. No, this was done out of the kindness of his own heart.

So, his chest warm with unexpected affection and the essay question long forgotten, Marcus clicked on the button to reply to his email. Typing away with a small smile, he didn’t hear the knock on his door until it repeated itself, loud and echoing. He frowned. His office hours weren’t for another hour and a half. Who so desperately needed to get ahold of him that they couldn’t wait until he was available?

That said, it wasn’t as if he were doing anything that couldn’t be put on hold for fifteen minutes, he thought with a resigned sigh. Better to get it over with now than to leave it to the future to take care of.

“Come in,” he said, preparing himself for whatever was on the other side of that door.

All the preparation in the world, as it turned out, wouldn’t have been enough.

“What’s going on, Kane?” his visitor said, rolling up the sleeves of her black leather jacket, and

his

jaw

dropped.

“ _Octavia_?”

 

***

 

_**ARKADIA** _

_**One week earlier** _

 

“Okay, I’m not saying this was a shitty idea. But I’m kind of saying this was a shitty idea. How are we going to get anything done with our fearless leader sitting right there?”

Monty rolled his eyes at Jasper’s comment, choosing to take a sip of tea instead of responding. If it was such a shitty idea, he didn’t have to come. But Octavia had talked them all into visiting the coffee shop after school instead of going home to play video games, smoke a little weed (just to make the games more exciting) and ignore their homework.

Well, _Jasper_ would ignore his homework.

The Griffin-Kane problem, as Octavia had taken to calling it, needed to be fixed. So she was taking initiative to solve it, and dragging anyone with a relative connection to either of the teachers into the fray with her. This included straight-laced student body president Clarke Griffin, who apparently had only come to make sure they didn’t break any school rules in their haste to get her mom back together with their ex-AP Gov teacher. Even though the role of principal had yet to be filled in Jaha’s absence, punishments could be every bit as severe as they had been when Arkadia’s administration was whole.

Looking at Clarke from across the table, Monty wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t be the one administering them.

“I’m sitting _right here_ , Jasper,” Clarke Griffin said, fixing him with her best ice-forming glare. Even though the sun was shining and the grass was green, Monty could’ve sworn he felt the temperature in the shop drop a few degrees. Another of Octavia’s brilliant ideas. In total, there were six people in attendance; himself, a reluctant Jasper, an energized Octavia, a withdrawn Clarke, a bored Bellamy, and a sarcastic Murphy.

“But for the record,” she added, “I don’t think this is going to work.”

“Not with that attitude,” Octavia muttered, raising her eyebrows and taking a long swig of her black coffee.

“ _Octavia_ ,” Clarke said, making every effort to keep her voice level as she swept a strand of blonde hair behind her right ear. “I don’t think anything we do is going to get my mom and Kane back together. She’d know right away if one of us had a hand in it. I’m just here to-“

“Make sure we don’t make it worse,” Jasper finished for her, taking a bite of a brownie Monty didn’t remember him buying at the counter. Well, that was one way to make this conversation more bearable. “We know.”

“Do you?” Clarke asked, frowning. “Do you know how upset she’s been? Have you heard her trying to cover up her crying by keeping the sink on when she gets ready for bed at night? Have you heard her crying in the shower?”

“I mean,” Murphy said with a smirk, “I haven’t been in the shower with your mom, Clarke. Not that I’d ref-“

Octavia smacked him upside the head before they could find out where his sentence was going, and for that Monty was extremely thankful. Clarke gave her a look of gratitude, and he began to suspect that the breakup had been just as hard on her as it had been on her mother.

“Anyway,” Octavia said with an eye-roll, “I’m not here to talk about whatever’s going through Murphy’s perverted brain. I’m here to talk about what happened with Kane and Abby. And how we can reverse it.”

“Octavia, you can’-“

“Save it, princess.”

This from Bellamy, who had been a wallflower for the majority of the conversation. He hadn’t ordered anything and sat on the far end of the table, glancing at his watch and waiting for the conversation to conclude. He gave the air of having better things to do, and as a senior he probably did. Although he occasionally locked gazes with Clarke in some unspoken understanding, and they appeared to have come to some kind of agreement on the situation at hand.

“Well, even if you don’t think it’s going to work, _Clarke_ ,” Octavia glowered, her voice low, “I’m gonna try.”

“How romantic,” Murphy quipped, humming a few bars of Wagner’s Bridal Chorus.

“Shut up,” Bellamy said, crossing his arms. With a cocked eyebrow and a widening smirk, Murphy did.

Octavia glared, Clarke ignored, and the conversation continued.

“I have a few ideas,” Octavia said, folding her hands on the table as she leaned forward. “Unless anyone else wants to go first, I’ll start.”

No one spoke – because no one else had been thinking about it has hard as she had – and Octavia continued.

“We could call Kane from Abby’s phone,” Octavia said, her eyes glittering with excitement.

“Okay,” Murphy interrupted with a snort, putting both feet up on the wooden table as he leaned back in his chair. Monty realized then that he didn’t remember anyone in their group inviting him. Why the hell was he here? “Assuming you could crack Abby’s passcode, which could be any number of things-“

“It’s Clarke’s birthday,” Monty interrupted, his mouth moving before his brain could catch up. Clarke’s jaw dropped – apparently, she thought they hadn’t figured out Abby’s passcode months ago – and opened her mouth to say something. Probably to reprimand them, he thought. But Murphy gave him a look of resigned condescension and continued, tilting back and forth on the legs of his chair like a pendulum.

“Right,” he smirked. “So you go ahead and put in Clarke’s birthday, or whatever. You call Kane. What do you do if he picks up? I don’t see any of you having a side job in voice acting.”

“We don’t say anything,” Octavia said quickly, an expression of annoyance flitting across her features. “That’s the point, Murphy. We call and hang up.”

Murphy raised his eyebrows, incredulous. “You call and hang up?”

Octavia’s glare was reaching a boiling point. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Murphy made a show of being skeptical, giving a snicker and a snort. “I guess not. Well. I’m just a little disappointed in you guys. If that’s your huge, master plan to get Griffin and Kane back together…forgive me for being a little unimpressed.”

Jasper crossed his arms, and Monty could practically feel rage radiating from him like a furnace. “Got any better ideas then? The door’s right there, if you can’t find it.”

“I know where the door is,” he retorted, slamming his chair back squarely on the ground with a noise that made the barista frown. “I’m just here to make sure you guys don’t fuck it up.”

“I can handle that,” Clarke said suddenly, having been quiet for the entirety of Octavia’s suggestion.

Bellamy gave her a glance that fell somewhere between annoyance and warning: don’t mess with Murphy.

“And I wouldn’t dream of arguing with you, Mrs. President,” Murphy said, elongating the final two words into a mocking drawl. “But what have you done thus far for the good of the cause? I, personally, don’t have much faith in your skills.”

“For your information,” Clarke snarled, seawater eyes churning with a thunderstorm, and Monty felt his skin crawl. He’d never seen her this angry – not even when the rumors were spreading about her mom and Kane three months ago. “I prompted her to go visit him.”

“Yeah. And that was the trip when they broke up, right?” Murphy said, a savage grin spreading across his lips. “So really, you’re the reason we’re here…princess.”

“Enough, Murphy!” Bellamy shouted, before Clarke could get in another word of protest. He stood up from his chair, face red and jaw set, but Clarke told him to sit after a moment of angry glares exchanged between the boys.

“Can everyone chill out a little?” Jasper said, flipping his hair out of his eyes.

“Or Murphy could leave,” Octavia muttered, too quietly for anyone but Monty to hear. He smiled, and she gave a brief grin in return. Slowly, adrenaline levels were calmed and the conversation returned to normal.

“Monty, what do you think about all this?” Octavia asked, bringing him directly into the spotlight of a conversation he’d been intent on observing from the shadows. “Do you support the phone idea?”

He paused, looked at everyone else around the table. Octavia looked eager. Clarke looked withdrawn. Bellamy looked interested. Murphy looked…well, if he looked at Murphy for too long he’d start getting angry. Jasper looked encouraging. And all of them, somehow, looked like they cared about what was going on.

In their own way, whether sarcastic or genuine, they gave a shit about whether or not their science teacher and their ex-AP Government teacher got back together. There was something weirdly awesome about that, he thought. They wouldn’t have ever associated with each other otherwise.

Which was why there was no way in hell he’d let the phone plan get off the ground.

“It’s not going to work,” Monty said, and the whole table groaned in unison. Octavia appeared especially disrupted: apparently she’d expected him to side with her.

“Well, do you have any better ideas?” she asked, scowling as her fingers carved an indiscernible pattern into the table’s surface. “I’d love to hear ‘em if you do.”

Monty shook his head. “We got rid of the footage,” he said, remembering the stressful day that had been of deleting the camera memory of the night of the snowstorm and replacing it with similar footage from that same hallway on a peaceful evening. Without Abby’s help, they weren’t sure they could do it; most of their plan had revolved around her being a distraction for Jaha, a red herring, a way to keep him off their scent. But she’d told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were not to involve themselves in anything relating to her relationship with Kane.

And when he heard her call him Kane, Monty knew things had gone bad. So had everyone else.

From there it had been a matter of putting together the pieces, which hadn’t been too difficult. It was clear that they’d broken up. Mrs. Griffin wasn’t staring at Kane’s door anymore, wasn’t checking her phone during class, wasn’t glancing at the clock every ten seconds on Fridays. Not that she’d ever been cheerful in first period, but she was especially dour in mornings now. And quizzes were getting harder, of that much he was certain.

“Griffin’s breakup is affecting the curve,” Jasper had whispered during lab one day, after getting back his third ‘C’ in a row. “She needs to get laid, before I flunk out.”

Monty had snickered, Octavia had continued working without a word.

“Getting rid of the footage isn’t good enough!” Octavia said, wearing the same look she’d had during Jasper’s joke. “Abby doesn’t even know it’s gone. Neither does Kane. The phone idea might be the only thing we have.”

Shaking his head, Monty elaborated on his disapproval.

“There are too many variables,” he said, reminded of his Calculus homework. To solve any equation, it had to be simplified. And this one was a mess. “Let’s say everything goes according to plan. We call Kane with Abby’s phone, it goes straight to voicemail, we put her phone back in her purse and everyone gets on with their lives. What then?”

Octavia’s eyes narrowed, as though she’d devoted a great amount of thought to this and was offended Monty would pose the question. “Kane sees he has a missed call from her and calls her back,” she said. “They talk. They work their shit out.”

Monty and Jasper shared a knowing glance. Getting the two of them to ‘work their shit out’ would take more than a phone call.

“You’re assuming a lot, Octavia,” Jasper said, doing his best to sound sympathetic. “If he called her back – which he might not – she could just say she accidentally called him. Or she could say it was us. There’s no guarantee they’d talk about anything, at least with this plan.”

Abruptly, Octavia slammed her palm against the table and gave them both a frosty glare.

“When the two of you come up with something that’s perfect,” she snarled, “you can criticize my decisions. Until then, we’re going with what we have. Clarke, can you steal your mom’s phone?”

Clarke’s eyes widened and she blinked a few times in rapid succession; apparently, she’d only thought she’d be a spectator here, intervening in case the group came up with anything too outlandish.

“O,” Bellamy interjected, breaking the deafening silence that had been about to begin. “They have a point. There are a lot of ways this could fall through.”

“Yeah?” Octavia said, fire burning in her eyes, tension coursing through her back, her jaw, her shoulders. “Well, the floor’s yours, big brother. What’s your great idea?”

Fumbling with his words, Bellamy began. And Monty listened, shocked that Bellamy Blake would have devoted such thought to the breakup between two teachers at a school he wouldn’t even be attending next year. It was clear that this wasn’t something he’d made up on the spot: it was carefully thought-out, well-envisioned, the kind of stuff he and Jasper were able to do with computers and, well, _gardens_.

Even Clarke, the most reluctant attendee at their gathering, was enraptured by it. For the moment, the “princess” nickname and constant grade feud was forgotten, replaced by genuine interest and concern. For that moment, they both wanted the same thing.

Her mother’s happiness.

When Bellamy was done talking, the table fell silent. Everyone stared at him in a stunned, solid quiet; the kind of quiet that exists as its own guest at the table, the kind of quiet that must be chipped away at instead of melted. And Monty knew everyone, including himself, was trying to find a flaw. Trying to find the leak in the ship, the break in the seal.

He couldn’t find one.

“Well fuck,” Murphy said from the opposite end of the table, getting up and slamming his chair into the table with more force than was even remotely necessary. “I think we’re done here.”

 

***

 

Marcus blinked once, twice, three times.

She was there.

Octavia Blake, in all her leather-clad glory, was standing in his doorway with a smile and a sparkle in her blue eyes that put a dull, throbbing ache in his heart. She hadn’t been one of his students, but she was a symbol of those who had: her brother, her boyfriend, all the other kids he hadn’t known how deeply he missed until she walked into his office and dragged a host of memories with her.

“ _Octavia_?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” she said, striding through the open door and sitting down in the chair opposite his desk as though she’d belonged there all along, as if she were another student at the university rather than a high schooler whom he desperately hoped wasn’t skipping school for this. “Thanks for the warm welcome, Kane.”

“I…” he stuttered, lost for words and half-believing this was a dream. How did she get here? She wasn’t old enough to drive. Did her brother take her? Was Bellamy missing school, too? Was Bellamy here? His heart warmed at the thought of seeing him – Bellamy Blake, one of his best students – and he almost asked her if he’d come, too. The more, the merrier.

But she looked like she was on a mission, and he knew better than to mess with Octavia Blake like this.

“Okay,” she said, propping her feet up on the far corner of his desk behind his laptop. Too stunned to protest, he let her continue. “I don’t have a ton of time until someone notices I’m gone, so I’m just gonna say this and you’re gonna agree.”

Marcus frowned, leaning forward in his rolling chair.

“There’s no way for me to kno-“

“You miss her.”

And just like that the frown evaporated, lifted, replaced momentarily by an expression of sorrow. Because as much as he was overjoyed to see Octavia, to be reminded of the larger student population she represented, there were other things of which she was a symbol, too. Arkadia wasn’t just a place where some of his favorite kids in the world attended.

It was the place where he realized, as he stared at her from across the hallway and their gazes met in a flush of embarrassment and unidentifiable emotion, that his feelings for her might not only consist of annoyance and hatred. It was the place where they met, the place where he first kissed her, the place where she’d first smiled at him. It was the place where he wrapped her in his arms and told her everything was going to be okay when he knew damn well it wasn’t.

Everything, including Octavia Blake, formed a maze that led him straight to Abby Griffin.

“Who?” Marcus asked, realizing after the syllable left his lips that it was the most idiotic possible response to her question. What did he expect her to say, _Clarke_?

“You know damn well who,” Octavia said, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “Abby.”

“She’s ‘Mrs. Griffin’ to you,” he responded instinctively, a reflex, an instinct, and his visitor grinned. Apparently, that was all the answer she needed. She jumped out of her chair and began pacing the tiny length of his office, spouting off questions and statements like firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

“You hate the way things ended.”

“How would you know that?” he asked, mystified.

“I have sources. Not Abby, so don’t get pissed at her. Or Clarke.”

_Great. So now the kids know, too._

“I’m not…happy with what happened, no,” Marcus said, figuring it might be best to give her what she wanted so she could get back onto whatever bus or into whatever car took her here and go to school, where she belonged. If Abby knew she were here, she’d have a fit. She’d been so insistent on the kids not being involved in their personal lives, and now this.

No matter how hard they tried, the kids found a way to weave their way into the web of their relationship. Even once it’d been blown away.

“You haven’t talked to her since then.”

Marcus sighed, wondering if they’d somehow figured out how to hack surveillance cameras and listen to his conversations with Indra. Six hours away, and they still knew his whole life down to the very last detail. If they’d studied this hard for their finals…

“No, I haven’t. She doesn’t want to hear from me, Octavia. It’s my fault, what happened. She wouldn’t pick up if I called.”

Octavia paused her pacing to give him another long, elaborate eye-roll.

“She misses you, you idiot.”

_She misses me?_

_No, she can’t._

“I don’t think-“

“Look, Kane,” Octavia said, tilting her head to the side. She truly looked as though she were talking to a toddler, her intelligence on a higher plane than his. Which, on the subject of Abby Griffin, he had to admit it might have been. She was the one seeing her every day, after all. “I drove six hours in my brother’s car to be here. I’m missing her class without being excused, and I’m gonna get a detention for that. Would I really do all this just to pull a prank on you? Make whatever the hell’s going on with you worse?”

He thought for a moment, remembering some of the things she and Monty and Jasper had pulled in their glory days. He’d heard horror stories of hiding phones in ceilings, setting off sprinkler systems and, most recently, pulling fire alarms. Pranks were an essential part of their repertoire, but this…this was something else entirely. This didn’t fit the bill. There was no one around to laugh, no one here to high-five.

And there was something in her eyes that made him think he could trust her, the girl with a no-nonsense glare and a fire in her heart. In a way, he thought, she was like her. They were both determined, unbreakable, and apparently unopposed to shattering a few rules when the time was right.

Something told him Abby would want him to listen to her. To hear her out, take her seriously, save her the lecture on missing school. Two out of the three things he could manage, for her sake.

She would’ve been happy with two out of three.

“Why did you come to see me?” he asked, barely whispering.

She smirked, elated to have gotten her way.

“There’s a plan,” she said. “And I think you’re going to want to be part of it. It’s all for you, anyway. You and Abby.”

_Oh. Shit._

“Octavia, I know Abby told you-“

“I don’t _care_ what Abby told me,” she said, talking over him until he gave up attempting to make her see reason. “I’m not in Abby’s office right now. So you’re gonna listen to this plan, and you’re gonna agree, and I’ll see you in a week and a half.”

She was so, so much like Abby.

The plan was, he thought, foolproof enough. For being constructed by a ragtag band of high schoolers with a strange emotional investment in he and Abby’s personal lives, it had a decent chance of working. Depending on a few factors he didn’t know how to analyze: namely, her reaction. A phone call would’ve been much simpler, he thought. But if he knew these kids, they never did anything halfway.

“So, what do you think?” Octavia said, having reached the end of her proposal. “Hell of a lot better than the other things we thought of.”

Marcus had no desire to learn what the ‘other things they thought of’ had been. The less he knew, he thought, the better.

“And you don’t think she’ll be angry?” Marcus said, amazed by how timid his words sounded. How could a sixteen-year-old address the subject with such eloquence, but he couldn’t get her name past his lips without his voice shaking?

“No,” Octavia said, stern. “She’ll be surprised, but she misses you too much to be mad about it. Honestly, I can’t believe she hasn’t called you or something. Even if it’s just a drunk call.”

_She’s too proud for that._

And in that second, that fleeting moment in time, Marcus considered his options. He could tell Octavia ‘no’ and get on with his life, move on and let this slumber in the past where it probably belonged. Because while Octavia was certain she wouldn’t be angered by this idea, Marcus wasn’t so sure. He could see it going a few different ways, and one way was the path of white-hot rage he’d seen on the worst night of his life.

But the other way was the path that might – just might – fix everything. If the stars aligned, this could do it.

Octavia stared at him expectantly, waiting for that one-syllable word that would let her know they had the green light to put their plan into action.

“Well,” Marcus said. “I suppose I’m going to need a suit.”

“Not quite,” Octavia said with a grin, practically radiating sunlight in her elation. “But you're close.”


	24. Of Prom Nights, Beginnings, and Endings

“Here, let me get that.”

Abby watched as Clarke, positioned in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom, continued tugging in vain at the stuck zipper on the back of her prom dress. She’d lived enough years to know zipping a gown was typically a two-person job, and with a sigh she realized there was no way she’d allow her daughter’s determination to ruin a 150 dollar dress. Her pocketbook would never forgive her.

This year, Abby decided she’d cover the cost of the outfit. For her first prom, Clarke deserved that: Abby's own parents had paid the cost of her outfit for that night, decades ago. But much higher than this on a teacher’s salary, and Abby wouldn’t be able to.

“I’m fine, mom,” Clarke insisted, tugging at the metal with no measurable degree of success. She wasn’t fine – Abby swore she saw the zipper move down a few notches – and was once again caught in that delicate place between insisting her daughter let her do it and allowing her to realize the consequences of her own decisions. Some lessons she had to learn on her own.

 _150 dollars,_ her brain reminded her, and it was decided. This wasn’t a lesson Clarke would learn on her own. And for the practicality of it all – the human desire not to flush that amount of money down the drain – Abby would admit her reasons were more sentimental than pragmatic.

Her daughter was getting ready for her junior prom. That was an experience Abby wanted to be a part of in whatever small capacity she could, whatever tiny position her daughter would allow her to fill. Raven was coming over to do her hair (she was good with braids, or so Clarke had informed her), she’d done her nails herself, and she’d gone dress-shopping with a group of her friends.

So if the most she could do was zip her daughter’s dress and tell her how beautiful she looked, Abby would be thankful to be allowed even that. And to _be_ allowed even that, she’d have to modify her approach to the situation at hand.

“I know you’re fine, honey,” she said with a smile, hovering underneath the doorway to her daughter’s room. “But can you let me be your mom? Just for now?”

After a pause that seemed to last a lifetime, Clarke smiled and nodded.

“Okay,” she said, and Abby felt herself flush with warmth. As independent as Clarke was, she was thankful she’d at least let her do something as nominal as helping her with a zipper on prom night.

For a split-second as she stepped under the threshold, Abby mused on her almost vampire-like predicament: unless given express permission, she couldn’t enter. She grinned until she realized her brain hadn’t contained that literary tidbit organically, and Abby braced herself for the tsunami of pain that would surely come crashing down on her.

That fact, of course, belonged to Marcus. Just like a thousand other things that ran through her mind in the course of day.

Her gaze fell on the copy of Wuthering Heights she hadn’t had the heart to put away, a shirt she’d thrown in the wastebasket and never emptied? Marcus. She looked over at the room across the hallway from hers at Arkadia? Marcus. She saw the hundreds of sparkly prom posters scattered across the school’s walls? Marcus. The evening news mentioned something about Polis? Marcus.

She couldn’t even look at the tomato sauce in the grocery aisle, and she didn’t know if that was its own brand of hilarious or simply heartbreaking. It seemed as though everything was either directly related to Marcus or something she wished she could have done with him, and it often took her brain a few moments to absorb the reality that they weren’t together anymore. To take her hand out of her pocket where it dug for her cell phone, to force her fingers to freeze halfway through dialing his number, to derail her train of thought as it chugged back to his sunny smile and coffee-colored eyes.

Forcing him from her mind for what had to be at least the tenth time that day, Abby took the zipper of her daughter’s dress between her thumb and pointer finger and pulled up. It fastened without a hitch, and she secured the clasp at the top of the gown to fasten her snugly in her outfit.

Clarke sighed, relieved. And although the view in the mirror was decent, Abby couldn’t help herself.

“Turn around,” she said with a shaky smile, caught off-guard by even the fractional image she glimpsed in the mirror. She’d seen the dress hanging in her daughter’s closet – a flowy, nutmeg-colored thing with a dusting of silver sequins on the bodice and the lower skirt – but her wearing it was another image entirely.

She was, in a word, breathtaking.

“Do you like it?” Clarke asked, and Abby nodded. She swallowed hard over a lump in her throat, her heart beating against an ache that told her Jake would have thought she was gorgeous, too.

“You look beautiful,” she said, looking away to conceal tears that had begun forming. Abby closed her eyes, took a deep breath. _You’re not going to cry on the night of your daughter’s junior prom._

“Thank you,” Clarke said, her smile a mirror image of her own. And somehow, although they’d never spoken the words, Abby knew they were both thinking the same thing. Wishing her dad were here, with his lopsided smile and ocean-blue eyes, taking a thousand pictures and tearing up when she drove away.

“You should be getting ready, too,” Clarke said instead, her blue gaze brimming with compassion.

“I know,” Abby responded, doing her best to sound excited: or, at the very least, interested. “I’m waiting until Raven gets here.”

_Getting ready._

Right.

Because prom night wasn’t just _Clarke’s_ prom: it was a night Abby would be spending next to the punch bowl off to the side of the dance floor, gingerly sipping the too-fruity, fizzy concoction and making sure nothing was getting too steamy for school between the dancing teenagers.

In short, she’d found out a week ago that Clarke had signed her up to be a chaperone at Arkadia’s prom. For the life of her, Abby couldn’t figure out why her daughter had thought her chaperoning the event would be a good idea. Abby could think of at least fifty things she’d rather do with her Saturday night than watch teenagers grinding on each other on the dance floor: a glass of wine and her favorite shows would’ve been much more her speed. Yet when she asked Clarke about it, noting that she hadn’t signed herself up for the task, the most her daughter would give her was that she wanted her to be there.

This triggered what Callie called Abby’s inherent “bullshit” meter, a sixth sense her friend maintained that all teachers had. Clarke hadn’t wanted her at any of her Homecoming dances, even though she’d volunteered during her freshman year – and the subject of her attendance there had driven a rift between them for a few weeks after the dance concluded. Jake had only shaken his head at her in disbelief: he couldn’t believe she’d volunteered, or that she’d thought Clarke would be okay with her attending.

But for whatever strange, murky reason, Clarke wanted her to be at this dance; whether it was meant as a distraction from the breakup, Abby wasn’t sure. It had been made apparent to her that she wasn’t going to get an answer.

So, to the dance she went.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t have half a glass of wine before she drove off into the sweaty, loud night. Not to get drunk, of course, she still had to drive: just to take the edges off the sharper components of the evening. And, although she was loath to admit it, to keep a certain ex-Government and Classic Literature teacher out of her head. Because there was still a part of her that lived in a hazy, hopeful world of possibilities, and her thoughts appeared to enjoy living in that dangerous territory. No matter how many times she tried to evict him, Marcus Kane kept finding places to live rent-free in her heart.

Could he have been chaperoning with her tonight, if things hadn’t gone the way they did? Could he have leaned against the rocky walls of the hotel ballroom with her, their fingers entwined, stealing kisses between songs and behind satin draperies that dangled from the ceiling? Would he have guided her onto the floor for a slow dance, wrapped his arms around her, ghosted his lips against her neck and made goosebumps spread the length of her body?

The doorbell startled her from her recollections, banished Marcus Kane back to the dark corner in her chest that housed reckless truths, the things she would never be able say but couldn’t stop feeling. Raven was here. It was time to live in reality. And in reality, Marcus Kane was gone.

Clarke moved toward the door, but Abby shook her head. “Stay here,” she said as she left, already halfway down the stairs before she added a second half to her sentence. “I’ll get it.”

She could use a little Raven Reyes in her life right now.

 

***

 

“I can do your hair, too,” Raven offered with a smirk, bounding upstairs after working on Clarke’s style for an hour. She strode into Abby’s field of vision and stood in the doorway of their tiny bathroom, leaning her back against the wooden doorframe as Abby worked on her makeup. “I’ll only charge you thirty more bucks. My services come pretty cheap.”

Abby laughed. She wasn’t wrong: getting her hair styled at any local salon would’ve been upwards of seventy. Raven had refused to accept anything over twenty dollars, insisting that she would have done it for free. This had resulted in a battle of iron wills that, in the end, had both bent: Abby wouldn’t be giving her fifty, but Raven would accept _something_.

“It’s not my prom, Raven,” Abby said, continuing to comb her hair over her shoulder.

“I know,” Raven admitted with a shrug. She hovered awkwardly much as Abby had done earlier with Clarke, and she was torn between inviting her inside and letting her stay there. The bathroom would get crowded with more than one person, but it was nice to have company. Something else to focus on. Something to help turn her mind off.

“Okay, I’m not really here to offer you my services,” Raven said, giving her a wink. “I’m here because you really fucking miss Kane,” Raven said. “And he really fucking misses you, and one of you needs to do something about it.”

Abby froze, her fingers clenching the brush in her hair.

“I don’t-“ she started, but the girl cut her off with a wave of her hand.

“Is there another reason you’ve been moping since I got here?” Raven asked. “And probably before I got here, and since the breakup?”

Abby cringed: certainly she hadn’t been that obvious? She’d been trying to be upbeat, if only for Clarke’s sake. It had been hard enough on her to lose her father: she didn’t need to suffer her mother’s heartache over a man she hadn’t grown up with. Just because Abby had fallen for Marcus Kane, it didn’t mean her daughter had.

“I’m not _moping_ ,” Abby insisted, dividing her hair into three sections and beginning to thread them into a loose braid. For a moment she caught her expression in the mirror: blank, emotionless, unfeeling. Jake used to tell her she was good at that: shutting down. When they’d argued, she kept everything inside – she didn’t cry, she didn’t break. But this time, things were different.

This time, she wasn’t shutting down.

“I don’t miss Kane. I’m better off without him, Raven.”

Raven saw right through her.

“Right,” she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. “So I guess the stuff Clarke has told me about you crying in the shower isn’t true?”

Abby’s stomach sank. _She heard that?_

She’d done everything she could to drown out the noise. She’d turned the water on high, cranked the radio to a blaring crescendo, kept the door closed and locked. But it wasn’t enough to drive away those pesky, nagging thoughts and emotions that gnawed away at her composure.

Sometimes, she had to admit, those feelings ate a hole through it. And those were the times she stood in the shower with tears streaming down her cheeks, still able to remember the feeling of his arms around her and his fingertips skimming the surface of her skin. With jets of hot water pouring over her, trapped in a sealed cube with nothing but the radio, steam, shampoo bottles and her mind, it was often harder to close him out. To pretend they’d never been together.

“I-“ she started, measuring how well Raven could detect her lies. Then she remembered something she’d said earlier, something that hadn’t registered over her need to defend herself. “How do you know how he’s feeling?”

Raven shrugged. “I don’t,” she said, and despite her continued insistence that she felt nothing for the man in question, Abby felt her heart drop. She combed her hair a little harder than necessary, the pain echoing the constant ache in her chest whenever the topic of Marcus Kane emerged. “But come on, Abby. The guy looked at you like you were some kind of goddess. It was adorable and gross.”

That stung, and she couldn’t articulate why. _If it was so obvious, why’d he tell me he loved me and then leave? A goddess. Sure._

“You don’t have the whole story, Raven,” Abby snapped, bitter, finding a single snarl at the end of her brown braid and engaging in battle. “How he ‘ _looked at me’_ didn’t matter in the end.”

Her companion frowned, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe. “Clarke told me what happened. She said it was about Jaha. That Kane didn’t take it well, and the whole security camera thing came up again, and it spiraled.”

Abby paused. That was, in a sense, exactly what had happened. Except Raven was missing one key detail, the thing that threw her heart out into the cold and locked the door behind it, left it shivering without a coat in one of the darkest hours of her life.

“Did Clarke tell you he ended it because of his guilt over the security tapes?” she said, and Raven shook her head. Truthfully, Abby didn’t even know if she’d told _Clarke_ that was why it ended.

“No, but I believe it,” Raven said. Abby’s jaw dropped, and Raven elaborated before she could continue. “I can tell you how Kane was seeing things, Abby.”

A wave of self-realization hit her as she fumbled with her mascara. Why the hell was she talking to a 19-year-old about her relationship troubles? Wasn’t this the kind of thing she was supposed to discuss with _adult_ friends over a beer at a bar, not in front of the mirror while getting ready for her daughter’s prom?

Maybe, she thought, it was because for whatever crazy reason, she trusted this 19-year-old. This particular teenager seemed to have a better handle on Abby’s life and relationships than she did, and she thought the least she could do was hear her out.

“You look at a problem and think about how to fix it. Which is, I’m guessing, what happened. You wanted to fix it. Right?”

Abby nodded, remembering how she’d tried to talk to him. How she’d practically begged him to see things her way, to think through the situation, to find a solution. There was always hope, she thought, and it was just a matter of finding it in the delicate situation in which they’d been placed. Marcus hadn’t seen it that way.

“Kane, on the other hand…fuck,” Raven continued, dropping her chin to her gray tank top to hide a smirk. “Kane’s an _idiot_ , Abby. The only thing that could convince him to let you go is the possibility you could get hurt from being with him.”

 _I want you to be happy._ His words had felt like a slap in the face back then, staring across the table at the man she loved while he ripped her heart out with every word. Was it possible that he’d meant it? That the act of letting her go had been meant as some kind of perverse protection, done out of fear rather than exasperation?

He said her happiness was what he wanted, but he had no idea how big a part he played in it.

“How do you know that?” Abby asked, determined to guide this talk away from the emotional minefield into which it was headed. She almost wondered if Raven had been talking to him, what with the way she seemed to know his emotions. As she carefully applied blush to her cheeks, she realized she wouldn’t put it past her to call him and demand an explanation.

“You learn a lot about a guy from jump-starting his car,” Raven said, casual, as if this were a fact Abby should have figured out on her own. “But you learn even more when you wind up in a parking lot in fucking subzero temperatures for no good reason, because this moron was gonna freeze his ass and die trying to jump-start his _girlfriend’s_ car.”

Her lips quirked up at the memory, an instinct her brain couldn’t repress. Though she hadn’t been there, she could imagine the scene: a confused Marcus, a chagrined Raven trying to tell him how to fix her car and, exasperated, deciding to do it herself.

That didn’t change the present, she reminded herself. It only made the past more enticing, and she was having a hard enough time prying herself from its embrace as it was.

“He chose his guilt over me, Raven,” Abby said, stern. Her hands were shaking as hard as they’d been that night, and God, how she wished she could make them stop. How she wished she could make this whole damn discussion stop. “He’d rather keep feeling that way than have me around. That much, he made clear.”

No matter what Clarke had told her, she could never convey the sensation of freezing, falling, collapsing when he made it clear that they should end things. The whole conversation had been like sliding on ice and waiting ten minutes to fall, being suspended in a perpetual state of waiting for an end that she dared to hope wasn’t really coming.

So, contrasted with her emotions on the subject, she was taken by surprise when Raven barked a short, amused laugh.

“Seriously?” she said, eyebrows raised, her elbow against the doorframe and her ponytail swinging as she chortled. “Abby, you’re as dumb as he is if you really think this was Kane making a _choice_.”

Confusion turned to anger, and Abby slammed the drawer containing her makeup closed with a bang that echoed around her home.

“I told him I wanted to solve this. That there had to be another way. He didn’t want to hear it,” she snapped, hating Raven for making her relive this and, yet, knowing there was no other way to trudge through it. Avoiding those memories hadn’t helped her heal: it was time to face them head-on. If only for the sake of getting on with her life.

“Hell,” Raven said slowly, as if talking to a toddler. She was, in a word, unfazed by her outburst: eternally the image of calm collectedness as opposed to Abby’s simmering rage. “Did you ever consider that it could be the other way around? He chose _you_ over his guilt, Abby. He decided he would rather go through the pain of losing you than deal with seeing you suffer because of him. And I think you know that.”

And just like that, her words doused water on the fire in her chest.

_He would rather go through the pain of losing you than see you suffer._

That sounded like the Marcus she knew.

That sounded like the Marcus she loved.

That sounded like the Marcus she lost.

He would, wouldn’t he? The components fit together, everything clicking like the last few pieces of a puzzle. Raven’s explanation marked the moment when every piece could only go one place, every coated image could only form one final product, a problem solved and a scenery completed. She was right. That much, Abby knew.

And that was when guilt started churning in her own chest.

Her theory – that he’d loved her enough to let her go – had been completely, unequivocally, false. Letting her go was the last thing he wanted, at least if Raven was to be believed. Instead, their circumstances had pried her from his embrace. It wasn’t selfishness that had forced him to end things: it was selflessness.

That sounded like the Marcus she missed.

“I…” she started, trailed off as she brushed past the girl and into the hallway. This soul-searching was something she didn’t have time for, not when she had a half-hour to be on the road for the Old Arkadia Hotel to help set up thousands of tiny balloons and appetizers. Regret was burning brighter and brighter inside her, and she had to stop it before it reached a fever pitch. There was no time for it now.

She had a dress to put on.

For some reason, she wondered if putting on her dress would make everything better. When she was younger she’d loved playing dress-up, pretending to be someone else; a princess, a witch, a doctor. Not that she’d had any particular troubles to escape at that young age, but there had always been an odd sort of comfort in shedding the image of Abby Walters in favor of Belle or Cinderella.

Maybe when she put on her dress tonight, she could be someone different. Someone who didn’t miss Marcus Kane more and more with every beat of her heart.

“You what?” Raven asked, following her, hovering in the doorway of her bedroom.

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” she finished quickly, taking a quick glance in the mirror and realizing she’d forgotten to put powder over her foundation. Couldn’t Raven have talked to her about this on a different day? A day when she wasn’t already bursting at the seams with chaperone stress?

“Yeah. Well, now you have. So call him,” Raven said.

Abby froze with her hands on her dress, one on the coat hanger and another on the fabric. She turned to face Raven with a frown.

“I can’t call him tonight. I’m getting ready,” she said.

It was a flimsy excuse, one Raven Reyes could have easily poked holes in and sank. But instead of starting an argument, Raven just shrugged. “I didn’t say you had to call him _tonight_. But Abby, you can’t keep ignoring how you’re feeling, not when it’s damn obvious to the rest of us.”

In no place to address her statement, Abby only gave her a nod. “I need to get dressed.”

“At least think about it,” Raven said. “I’d bet half my savings account that he misses you, too. And now that the security footage is gone, you guys can-“

“It’s gone?” Abby said, her words coming out in a sharp gasp. How did Raven know anything about the footage and what happened to it? For God’s sake, she lived in _California_. She was as removed from the situation as was humanly possible. Unless…

“This has nothing to do with Clarke,” Raven said, reading her mind. “So don’t get mad at her about it. Although really, I don’t know why you’d get mad at anyone. They basically removed the only roadblock for you and Kane, gave you a green light, and raised the speed limit while they were at it.”

 _They._ Who were ‘they’? Her heart told her there was only one group of kids it could have been, one group of kids who cared enough about her relationship with Marcus to risk their education and future in order to get them back together.

“Jasper, Octavia and Monty,” she said, setting her dress on her bed and giving Raven a knowing stare. Raven Reyes was good, but she wasn’t that good: the expression that flickered across her features was one of understanding.

She paused for a few moments, seemingly uncertain how to respond. Then, with a tiny smile, it appeared she came to a conclusion.

“Miller was in on it, too,” she said. “Gotta give credit where credit is due.”

In spite of it all – the absolute illegality of her students hacking a school computer system and deleting the footage that incriminated them both – Abby had to laugh. It was such a common expression, used under such ludicrous circumstances.

“And you were involved in this,” Abby said. Her hand moved to her hip of its own accord: while she couldn’t technically punish Raven for her behavior, that didn’t mean she approved. These kids really needed to stop jeopardizing their futures for her and Marcus’ sake.

“Of course,” Raven said, her tone jokingly offended. “I’m an expert at hacking the school computer systems. The random Flo Rida songs on the intercoms were all me, by the way. You’re welcome.”

Abby didn’t bother telling her she hadn’t been working at Arkadia for the ‘random Flo Rida songs’. Raven looked too proud of herself, humming a few bars of a song she didn’t know with a smug smile.

“Why did they do it?” Abby asked, curious. “The kids, I mean.”

They’d been trying to help her and Marcus since the beginning, but why? Raven, she knew, was in it for the thrill of messing with the school and, possibly, for her and Marcus’ happiness. But the kids…what was in this for them?

“Well, I know Jasper thinks the grading’s gotten harder since you’re not getting laid,” Raven smirked, and Abby blushed. Even though there was no truth in the statement, a bubble of embarrassment surfaced that left her cold and hot all over.

Raven grinned. “I know you fucking miss Kane, but Jasper thinks you miss _fucking_ Kane.”

Abby rolled her eyes. “Okay. And the others?”

“I think they’re doing it just because they care, Abby,” Raven said after a pause. “Everyone knows how hard you were hit with Jake, and that was the first time they’d really seen you happy since it happened. That matters.”

Overcome with emotion, Abby could only nod and stare at her dress. Even eye contact might push her over the edge, and had no desire to spend another half-hour redoing her makeup.

“Marcus doesn’t know, does he?” she asked, and Raven shook her head.

“I don’t know what he knows,” she said. “I know what they told me. And a week ago a drunk-off-his-ass Jasper called me and thanked me for helping them delete it. Sounded like a celebration to me.”

After a few moments of quiet, Raven spoke. Her voice was soft, caring in a way Abby had rarely heard from her before. It was the voice she used when she knew Jake had died, the voice she used around Clarke when she was crying.

“Call him,” she said. “Tell him it’s gone. He doesn’t have to be worried about it, or Jaha, anymore. And if he still doesn’t want to get back together, you’ll have your answer. But if you ask me…” she paused, grinned, “I think he’ll be halfway to your house by then. That’s just how Kane works.”

Abby offered Raven a shaky smile, fighting the urge to draw her in for a hug. But if she hugged the girl who leaned against her doorway and dropped the truth on her like an atomic bomb, the blast might break the dam of emotions she’d been holding back.

So she settled for telling her thank you and gesturing for her to leave.

“I do have to get ready, Raven,” she said, and her daughter’s closest friend was out of the room before she finished her sentence.

“Call him!” she exclaimed, her voice echoing as she bounded down the stairs. “Or I’ll call him for you!”

It very well might have been a threat, but Abby just laughed.

 

***

           

The dance was exactly as Abby assumed it might be. Which was to say it wasn’t wonderful, but it _was_ its own brand of awful.

Objectively, she knew she should have been able to enjoy it. There was a relentless energy echoing through the ballroom of the Old Arkadia Hotel, a vitality that seeped into the uneven wooden floors, pulsed through the flickering colored lights and walls that smelled of old paint and sweat. Time, it seemed, had bent to fit the tempo of the room; seconds seemed longer and shorter all at once, molded to the teens to which the evening belonged. It evaporated and solidified and slipped away, as the kids laughed and spun each other around to ‘Cotton Eye Joe’.

Feeling the sweetness of the punch attacking her taste buds and the strange bitterness of the plastic cup against her lips, all Abby could think was that it wasn’t evaporating fast _enough_.

If she hadn’t taken it upon herself to chemically bond to the wall and remain there for the entire evening, sipping fruit punch and staring at the clock like one of her students on a Friday afternoon, maybe she would’ve even let one of the kids drag her out onto the dance floor. But as it were, she felt ridiculous and awkward and embarrassed.

Abby Griffin wanted to go home.

She felt ridiculous in the dress Raven and Clarke had urged her to buy; a full-length midnight blue thing, silky and flowing, with a neckline that plunged between her breasts and exposed far more skin than was appropriate for a school dance. She wasn’t eighteen anymore, and this felt like an eighteen-year-old outfit. But she remembered trying it on: how Clarke’s jaw had dropped and Raven added her to her Snapchat story.

“Whoa. You look _hot_ ,” she’d said, and Clarke had given her friend a glare that could’ve melted the small pockets of snow that still cluttered around gutters and drainages all over the county. April brought warmer weather, but it wasn’t enough to expunge all the white stuff.

“What?” Raven had said with her trademark smirk, more bemused than intimidated as she typed away on her phone screen. “I tell it like it is.”

So at their request she bought the dress, wore a pair of heels that had been lurking in her closet for a few years, and threaded her hair into a slightly fancier version of her traditional braid that Raven had called a “dutch braid.” Clarke told her she looked beautiful, Raven told her she looked sexy, and Abby told herself she looked out of place. Overdressed for her nominal role in the evening, uncertain why the girls had guided her toward this particular outfit.

“Hot damn, Mrs. Griffin!” one of the boys exclaimed, catcalling her playfully as he walked by – thankfully, he wasn’t one of her students – and she felt her face flush. This had been an extraordinarily, horribly, atrociously bad idea. And now she was trapped in it for another...could it really have only been ten minutes since she last checked?

Why the hell had Clarke been so insistent on this dress?

Oh, well. It didn’t matter now.

Another sip of punch, another glance at the dance floor, another deep sigh. At least Clarke was having a good time, and at the end of the day, that was all that mattered. As long as her daughter was laughing and smiling out there, each of her hands enclosed in one of a leather-clad Lexa’s as she spun her around in a circle, that was enough to make the whole damn night worth it.

But that didn’t mean Abby wasn’t counting down the seconds until it was over.

Her phone, hidden behind a stack of cups, vibrated once. Technically she wasn’t supposed to have it out – she was supposed to have left it in her purse – but she’d managed to sneak it onto the table when no one was looking. It was the only thing sanding down the rough edges of her evening, as Callie texted her through the night.

 **How’s it going?** she asked, and Abby leaned back against the wall with a faint _thud_. Of course. The question she wanted to answer the least.

 **Fine.** she responded, unable to keep her gaze from wandering to the time at the top of her phone. There was no way it had only been two minutes since she last checked. It just wasn’t possible.

 **Ouch. Glad I didn’t volunteer.** Callie responded a few minutes later, with a smirking emoji that made Abby groan in exasperation. Technically, she hadn’t volunteered, either. But her daughter had signed her up and stuffed her into a dress that was twenty years too young for her, and hadn’t given her much in the way of an explanation for any of it.

Abby was just about to send something a little passive aggressive – she wasn’t proud of it, but dammit, Callie could at least be _sympathetic_ – but her friend texted her again before she could press the button.

 **How are you doing with everything?** she asked, and Abby barely bit back another groan. If she kept going this way, her next question would be, “and how much are you missing Marcus right now? Pretty bad, huh?”

The answer to that, the answer she’d never send, was just one word: horribly. She missed him so much that she could practically taste it – the bitterness at the corners of her tongue that had nothing to do with the punch, the tears that always seemed seconds away from forming. And she hated herself for it, for feeling like this right now, because it was the very antithesis of how she should be feeling.

Clarke was happy. Shouldn’t that be enough for her to be happy, too? Did it make her selfish for staring off into space and imagining his arms around her, his lips in her hair, looking at the slow-dancing teens and wishing he’d hold her that way?

Well, she thought as her gaze found a couple who were getting a little too…cozy with the slow dancing. Maybe not exactly like that. That, they would’ve saved for later.

 **Fine, I guess,** she responded, echoing her earlier statement and then realizing this seemed like an invitation to talk about her feelings. It most certainly was not. So she added, **It’s a hundred degrees in here and the punch tastes like cough syrup. But other than that…** she added an emoji that had its tongue sticking out, an indication that she was kidding. Hopefully, she thought, it would be enough to deflect the unchecked emotion in her earlier message.

It wasn’t.

 **You’re allowed to miss him, you know.** Callie responded, and Abby almost dropped her phone. Was she that obvious, even through texting? Were her thoughts tattooed on her forehead for the world to see? Abby Griffin never considered herself a woman who wore her heart on her sleeve. So why the hell could everyone see it?

 **I don’t miss him**. she said, knowing that was a lie her friend would be able to see right through. And sure enough, as the music blared in the background and the kids giggled and jumped and danced, Callie called her bluff.

** Abby, I love you but that’s bullshit. **

Taking a deep breath to calm her racing heartbeat, Abby set her phone down in its hiding place behind the punch bowl and counted to ten.

 _One._ She could still taste him, sweet and hopeful like a rainstorm after a drought. The taste of a new beginning.

 _Two._ The crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiled.

 _Three._ His voice, the chocolate-like richness of his words that had the unique ability to make her heart skip from hundreds of miles away.

 _Four._ The sensation of his hand in hers, a satisfying sandpaper roughness that was as relaxing as it was comforting.

 _Five._ His hair, soft, smooth, begging her to run her fingers through it and hear him sigh when she did.

 _Six._ His laughter, a sweet sound that evaporated the tension of a long day off her shoulders as efficiently as a massage or a warm bath: the sound of sunlight.

 _Seven._ The way it felt to curl up next to him in bed, skin on skin as his arms wrapped around her and pulled her close, breathing as one and melting into each other as sleep claimed them.

 _Eight._ The way he looked at her, as though she was the only thing that mattered to him in the vastness of the world, the first vision of a blind man who’d just been granted sight.

 _Nine._ The way he’d always known what she was thinking, his uncanny ability to read her even when she thought she’d kept the pages blank.

 _Ten._ The way he said he loved her, the pureness of it that resounded in his gaze, a truth conveyed in the whole of his being instead of his lips.

Her heart pounding and fingers trembling, it seemed counting to ten had done nothing for her. And thus, it was time to say it. She might not have been able to say it earlier, not to Raven, because getting her mouth to move that way – her lips to make those shapes – was still a little too hard for her heart to process.

Abby knew she needed to let it out, even if over a text to a woman who would soon be happily engaged to the love of her life. But she had no prayer of doing that here, where teenagers were grinding and swinging and the music was too loud and her thoughts were louder. So, under the guise that she needed some air, she escaped first into the blindingly bright hallway and then to the single-stalled women’s restroom.

It was bullshit. It had been bullshit since last month, since the moment she slammed his door closed and walked into the winter night. It was bullshit when she cried, when she insisted he was the farthest thing from her mind to the myriad of people who offered her sympathy. It was bullshit to keep denying it.

_Call him._

Staring absentmindedly at the tan tiles of the restroom floor, she measured her options. If she called him now, they wouldn’t have much time to talk. The lack of practicality of this place was astounding – really, a single stall for a high school prom? – and it would only be a few minutes before someone came along and asked her to leave with a gentle knocking on the scuffed wooden door.

She wasn’t allowed to go outside, which would have been the ideal scenario. Given that she’d already taken her one ten-minute break and Vice Principal Shumway wasn’t likely to take kindly to her requesting another, it was another nullified option. As much as her heart would argue otherwise, she did have a job to do. And she had to get back to it.

But she could call him now, tell him the only three words that still mattered: _I miss you._

Shoving Callie’s text to the back of her mind, she leaned back against the cracked tile and scrolled through her contacts. It didn’t take long for her to find the one she was looking for; the one entry that was so much more than a name and a number, the one that still made her heart skip when she glimpsed it, the one she’d only have to click to hear the sound of his voice.

Unexpectedly dizzy, inhaling the acrid scent of weed and smoke and perfume, her pointer finger trembled over those ten digits. For God’s sake, they were only three words. She could handle three damn words. She’d said so much more to him before, in the rosy haze of her adoration, when everything had been tinted and glowing.

She was a grown woman, not a teenager who couldn’t handle a simple phone call to her ex. She was a grown woman, fully able to swallow her pride and say she got it wrong.

_I miss you._

She pressed the button, saw the background on the digits flash bright blue and fade to black. Heart pounding a staccato symphony, she raised the phone to her ear.

_I miss you._

The phone rang once, and her breath caught in her throat.

_I miss you._

It rang again, and she continued her quiet dress rehearsal. Every time she’d called, he’d answered. She’d have one chance to get this right, and she couldn’t ruin it. She wouldn’t let herself ruin it.

_I miss you._

Again, the metallic buzzing beginning to blur with her shortened breath and blurry vision.

_I miss you._

“Hello, this is Marcus Kane-“

“I love you,” she blurted in a rush, clamping her lips closed, clenching her jaw. Her cheeks flushed bright red and she clutched her phone in a fit of embarrassment. _Stupid,_ she chided herself. _Why the hell would you…and now he’s going to…_

She’d always prided herself on her ability to stay in control of her emotions, to channel them into everything at just the right time. And what a time, she thought with chagrin, to lose that control. This was the very definition of going too far, too fast. Where had that _come_ from?

Raven answered for her, an echoing voice in her head with the words she couldn’t even think. _Because you do love him,_ the girl insisted, her brown eyes bright as she took the truth and shone a floodlight on it. _You never stopped loving him._

Stopping loving him, it seemed, would be so much harder than starting.

Abby had thought it would be easy – that after it ended, it would be like flipping off a light switch. That she could take the brightness that burned inside her for him, turn a lever, and dim it. But when she thought back, she couldn’t remember how she started. When had she fallen in love with Marcus? Had there been one concrete moment, one sliver of time that cemented her feelings?

More likely it had been a combination of little things; the way he sang with her in the car, splashed her with dishwater, kissed her in his classroom, drove to meet her in the middle of nowhere. Her love for him was a melting pot of a hundred times she’d spent staring at him with a smile, glaring at him with a frown, holding him with a sigh.

How had she ever thought she could turn that off in a heartbeat?

How had she ever thought she could call him and say anything other than those three words?

Heartsick, she waited for his response. At least now she’d know what he thought. If he felt the same. And if not, she could begin the process of falling out of love with the man who still had her heart.

“Professor of Classic Literature at Trikru University,” Marcus said, conversational in a way he wouldn’t be if he’d just heard the woman he loved confess her feelings after a month of separation. “I can’t take your call right now, but please leave me a message. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

_Oh._

With a sigh, she hung up. Despite the fact that she knew she should be relieved – there was no way in hell she should’ve led with those three words, and now whatever higher powers existed in the universe had given her a second chance – Abby felt oddly like her insides had been scooped out and not replaced. She felt hollow, empty, and aching. He hadn’t picked up.

And Marcus Kane _always_ had his phone.

She’d always found that funny, the way her Marcus was a walking contradiction. He wouldn’t touch social media, was allergic to Facebook or Twitter, but he carried his phone with him everywhere he went. She’d often wondered if it had to do with his mother – if he always meant to call her and never found the right time, kept his phone in his pocket just in case he found the nerve – but she’d never asked.

But during the evening, especially at this time…he would have seen her call. There was no way around it. His bedtime was early, but not this early. Unless he’d undergone a total personality overhaul in the month since she’d seen him last, he spent his Saturday nights with a copy of something from their high school advanced literature program and a steaming cup of tea.

Which meant he’d not only seen her calling him, but he’d left it go to voicemail. She and Raven had read him completely wrong. Maybe this time, there wasn’t hope. Maybe this time there was just bad blood.

Marcus had no desire to talk to her, to work things out, to reopen the door they’d both closed and locked over a month ago. He’d buried the key, and biting her lower lip to keep it from trembling, Abby thought she might have to do the same. Whatever lay beyond that threshold would remain untouched to them now, relics of a future they’d never live. Somehow, she’d have to make peace with that. Her phone clattered to the ground with a subtle crash, and she saw it falling before she knew she’d dropped it.

A sudden knocking startled her from her reverie, and she realized a line had probably formed outside the tiny room she inhabited. A horde of girls whose dresses leaked glitter were probably waiting for her to vacate the only restroom on the premises, and the least she could do was get ahold of herself to face them. So she took a deep breath and prepared to again face a crowd of teenagers, all of whom were having a better time that night than her.

Then she threw open the door and tried her best to forget.

“Sorry,” she apologized to a girl in a pink dress who shed glitter as she walked, darting past a line that had formed outside the single-stalled room. Abby paused for a moment to get her nerve back, readying herself to return to the dungeon of loud music and louder teenagers.

And that was when she heard it.

It was faint at first, a whisper of music so quiet Abby almost thought she’d imagined it. But as she moved closer to the room it became apparent: the soft song of the guitar in those familiar chords she knew so well. This was it. The beginning of her favorite song.

 _Clarke,_ she thought with a wan smile as she strode back to the ballroom under flickering globe lights that dangled from rusted chains on the ceiling, her heels sliding on the dull oak floor. This had to be Clarke’s doing. After all, what high school prom DJ played ‘Iris’ of his own free will? In order to make her feel better, her daughter had waltzed up to the man controlling the music and put in a request for a song that few of the high schoolers knew and even fewer would find suitable to dance to.

She paused for a moment outside the threshold, steadying herself after her right ankle nearly folded on the slick ground. Everything would have been perfect, touching, emotional…if this hadn’t been the song he sang with her in the car. If she couldn’t hear his voice crooning the words from the driver’s seat, the lights of the highway reflecting the sparkle in his eyes. She could still feel the electricity that had coursed through every inch of her body when she heard him sing, a sound that conveyed the beauty, kindness, and love that lay inside him.

“ _And I’d give up forever to touch you, ‘cause I know that you feel me somehow_ …”

_Deep breaths. Count to ten._

With a rush of nausea, Abby remembered counting to ten hadn’t worked last time. But Clarke, the wonderful, perfect daughter she was, didn’t know she’d sang it with Marcus. There was no way for her to know. And if she didn’t push her idiotic reminiscing aside, suck up her pride, and go in there, she’d disappoint the person she loved most.

And Abby knew beyond a single doubt, knew in the center of her soul, that this was the reason her daughter had wanted her to chaperone. To play her favorite song. To show her everything would be okay in the end, as long as they had each other.

So she followed at least part of her own advice, took a breath that expanded her chest a few inches, and blew it out slowly. Then she closed her eyes for a heartbeat of a second, walking into the room with her phone in her hand as if she’d only stepped outside for a casual call, and steeled her nerves for whatever was coming next.

She opened her eyes, and the room went silent.

Or at least it might have, because everything from there registered in intervals, in spurts of a reality she was certain was nothing more than a dream.

Marcus Kane was standing in front of her, dressed in a black tuxedo with satin lapels that shimmered in the twilight glow of the overhead lights and the disco ball, holding a bouquet of roses and looking at her with an expression that said he’d been waiting here – in spirit, at least – from the moment she walked out the door.

He looked exactly the same as he had the moment she left, his appearance almost frozen in the millisecond she’d looked back at him and thought about everything that wasn’t happening, the door to the future with him that she was about to slam shut. His hair, smooth and soft, appeared almost black. His salt and pepper beard was longer, but only fractionally: if she hadn’t been so intent on observing him, memorizing him with a lump in her throat as she tried to prove this was a dream, she wouldn’t have noticed a difference.

“Abby,” he said, his voice shaking slightly as he stepped toward her.

It was then she realized she was moving.

Her feet carried her toward him of their own free will with her song playing in the background, closing the distance between them in a few verses of the tune she knew by heart.

“ _And I don’t want the world to see me, ‘cause I don’t think that they’d understand. When everything’s made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am_.”

She stood in front of him, lungs burning, barely able to choke down the sweat-stained air that sifted through her nostrils and fueled her pounding heart.

He stood in front of her, lungs burning, barely able to choke down the millions of words he’d been saving for her since the night she left.

_“And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming…”_

Her hands were shaking as she pressed them against her dress.

His were shaking as he clenched them around the stalks of the roses.

_“All the moments of truth in your lies…”_

She looked at him with a thousand words on her lips and decided none of them mattered.

He looked at her with a thousand apologies and decided they were all important.

_“When everything feels like the movies…”_

She felt tears begin to form in her eyes for the third time that night, decided she didn’t care if this was a dream as long as he was here. As long as she had him for however long she was asleep.

He felt tears begin to form in his eyes for the first time that night, decided that this was closer to perfection than any dream he’d ever had. Even the possibility of having her again – however minute – was better than being asleep.

_“Yeah, you’ll bleed just to know you’re alive…”_

They stared at each other for a long moment, frozen in a time that belonged only to them as the world moved in their orbit.

They both opened their mouths at the same time, each saying the same thing in different words.

“ _And I don’t want the world to see me, ‘cause I don’t think that they’ll understand. When everything’s made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am._ ”

If this was a dream, it was the best they’d had in months.

“I’m so sorry,” Marcus said, brown eyes churning with remorse, regret, and the haunted agony of living half a life without the woman who was three-quarters of him. Of the man he always wanted to be. “Abby, I’m so sorry for everything I said. I know I can’t ask you to forgive me. What I did was selfish, and I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I never should have-“

She heard nothing after those first three words, closing the tiny distance between them as she rested her hands on his, steadying them around the shaking bouquet of red flowers. And then she knew there was only one thing she could say to him, one thing that would convince him that she didn’t blame him or resent him. That everything he held in his gaze was reflected in her heart, in her soul, and she’d been as tormented by living without him as he’d been by existing without her.

“I love you,” she said, as determined then as she’d been hesitant on the phone. His eyes widened, his lips parted slightly, as though she wasn’t the only one questioning their reality at the moment. And she’d say it over and over again with their song blaring in the background. Against the singing of the guitar and the piano and the swell of memories they hadn’t yet made, she’d repeat it until he believed it.

“I…” he swallowed hard, disbelieving, and she could see her words beginning to glue his shattered heart back together. So she reached up and cupped the side of his face, pulled his forehead down to rest against hers. She could feel him shaking as her skin touched his, could feel the anxiety emanating from him like sound waves from a speaker.

“Marcus,” she sighed, feeling herself becoming whole again as his arms came around to hold her close. Now, secure in his arms, she was a series of jumbled letters that finally formed that one four-letter word of which she’d never been able to let go. “I love you.”

She felt a coolness graze her lips as he inhaled, breathed a shaky breath.

“I love you, too,” he said, every word ripe with meaning.

Abby knew then that he didn’t have to say it, even though hearing those words from his lips was like stepping inside on a freezing winter day. She felt it. She felt it in the way he held her, the strength in his embrace that said it louder than words ever could: he’d never let go of her again.

 _I’ll always catch you,_ he’d said all those months ago, drunk in the middle of David Miller’s classroom. And he hadn’t lied. He’d caught her, over and over again, in every way imaginable since then.

He caught her when it mattered.

He came back.

He’d traveled six hours to the middle of a crowded ballroom filled with sweaty, hormonal teenagers, to fold her into his arms and apologize for something that was as much her own fault as his.

That was the Marcus she knew.

That was the Marcus she loved.

She pulled her Marcus close, glanced over his shoulder at Clarke. Standing next to Bellamy and Octavia and a few other kids – Monty, Murphy, Jasper – she wore a grin that eclipsed the glimmering sequins on her dress. Although they were across the room from each other, Abby could tell she was crying.

Even though it had taken him longer this time, he’d kept his promise. But this time, she thought, it had been mutual.

“I’ll always catch you,” she whispered as her lips grazed his ear, felt him exhale a gentle laugh against her neck that came on the heels of a feather-soft kiss. He’d been drunk that night, but he remembered. Of course he remembered.

“I’ll always catch you.”


	25. Of Resolutions and Slow Dances

The moon rose against the backdrop of the deepening night, the dance slowed to an end, and the freeway lights blurred in the sky as Abby sat in the passenger seat of a car belonging to the man she hadn’t dared hope she’d see again.

Part of her still thought she was dreaming as the glowing yellow-gold flickered above them, casting a shadowy light on the console where their hands rested, intertwined. Marcus had turned on the radio in the background as he drove, something soft, acoustic, and sweet that blended beautifully with the surrealism of it all. Everything looked brighter with him by her side, the shadows that had lurked in her mind erased by his presence.

But he was here, he was real, and he was hers.

The last few hours of the dance had passed in a kind of elated haze, nestled in a place between exhaustion and ecstasy as she walked a tightrope between trying to figure out how the hell he’d gotten here and deigning not to care. There was half a theory formed in her head, something involving Bellamy and Clarke and Raven, but it was murky at best. She’d find answers eventually, one way or another – she always did – but for now, there was something to be said for not pursuing the truth. For enjoying this moment as it was, mysteries and all.

The biggest mystery was sitting beside her, idly stroking her thumb with his as they sped down the empty highway littered with flickering lights and metallic overpasses. Abby glanced over at him with a smile, making an observation she’d wanted to make since the moment they left the dance.

“You’re pretty popular, Mr. Kane,” she said with a teasing smirk, eyebrows raised. Marcus laughed, and her heart ached with joy. She hadn’t realized how much she missed that sound until she heard it again, until she understood just how much of her soul had been left with him when she stormed out the door.

“I can’t say I understand it,” Marcus said. She knew they were both remembering the same thing – the crowd of kids that had gathered around them to watch their reunion was but one aspect of the night. After their song finished there had been a select group of ten students who took to trailing Marcus for the better part of the evening like lost puppies, desperate for his guidance. They nagged him (or, more politely, _asked_ ) him to help them study for their AP exams, begged him to hold a review session, prattled off names of historical figures and events Abby had never heard of in her life. And Marcus engaged with them despite the awkward circumstances, sending apologetic glances her way between questions, his gaze a promise that their night wouldn’t end when the dance came to a close.

If nothing else, she’d thought as her emotions oscillated between wistfulness and annoyance, his kids were dedicated. Either that, or they really, truly missed their teacher. More likely, she concluded, the answer was a little bit of both. And she could hardly blame them for stealing him for the rest of the night, not when she understood what it was to miss him so horribly.

“I do,” Abby said. She watched as Marcus guided his car into the lane for that all-too familiar Polis exit, realized with a jolt of excitement that they’d be at his apartment in around fifteen minutes. _Finally, some privacy._ Although if his students were half as devoted as she suspected they might be, she wouldn’t put it past them to find his address and meet them at the door.

“Why?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused. Abby smiled: only Marcus Kane could mean so much to so many people and not consider himself important.

“They miss you,” Abby said, disentangling her hand from his as they paused at a red light. Marcus glanced over at her, surprise resounding in his chocolate gaze.

“They have a new teacher now,” he said. “Byrne, isn’t it?”

Abby nodded, reached up to give his shoulder a comforting squeeze.

“She’s not you,” she said softly. “Clarke’s still having trouble with her grades. She told me Bellamy is struggling, too.”

Marcus scoffed. “They were my best students. I hardly think-“

“Well, they are,” Abby interrupted him with a playful sternness, trailing her hand down his arm as they began to move again. “And you won’t convince me it has nothing to do with them missing you, Marcus. So don’t try.”

Her heart fluttered as she saw a flicker of white teeth in the moonlight, noticed he was smiling. For once, he seemed to be taking this for what it was: a compliment.

“If they’re having difficulties, there are probably others,” he said. “Nate Miller asked me to put on a study session before the exam, to help him and the others review the material. I didn’t say no, but…” he paused, gave a tiny little sigh that Abby knew translated to mean, _but I’d have to drive down from Trikru for it._

“They’d understand if you couldn’t,” Abby said, confident that no one would hold a grudge against him for refusing to commit to a review session if they knew how far away he lived. It wasn’t cheap to drive from Trikru to Arkadia – that much she knew from experience – and although he wasn’t hurting for money, it would impact his ability to get work done. “You could probably do it over Skype, though.”

“Skype?” Marcus asked, tilting his head, eternally the image of a confused, bearded puppy. Which was, she thought, exactly what he became whenever she mentioned technology invented beyond the 90’s. The month they’d been separated had felt like a lifetime, but it was a relief to know he’d stayed exactly the same clueless, technology-allergic man she’d fallen in love with.

“Skype,” she said, laughing at his wide-eyed expression. “It’s like FaceTime, but it works for everyone. We can only FaceTime because we both have iPhones.”

The confused puppy returned, and she decided to stop trying to force him to play fetch with a ball he was never going to catch.

“I can teach you later,” she volunteered, and he relaxed. “It’s pretty simple.”

She heard him grumble something that sounded dangerously similar to “for _you_ ,” and bit back another laugh.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she with a lighthearted solemnness, angling herself toward him as a red light caught them in its grip.

“I’m listening,” he said, matching her tone.

“I’ll teach you Skype, and you teach me how to make that pasta sauce.”

He beamed, his smile outshining the maroon glow of the traffic light. “I hadn’t forgotten about that. Actually, I-“ he paused, his cheeks going red. There was an awkward quiet for a few moments, blurred only by the gentle humming of the engine and the piano singing over the speakers, before he said, “never mind.”

“What?” she asked. What could he be so embarrassed about where the pasta sauce was concerned?

“It’s nothing,” he maintained, taking off a little faster than was necessary when the light again glowed green. “It’s nothing bad, either,” he modified his statement, apparently worried that she’d interpret his befuddlement the wrong way. “It’s just…”

He paused again, took a deep breath.

“I already bought all the ingredients for it at Trikru,” he said, and Abby understood where he was going before his words ended up at their destination. She wasn’t the only one, it seemed, who had forgotten at times that they’d broken up. “I made it home before I remembered.”

Abby bit her lip, suddenly swept under by a current of emotion. How had they ever thought they could leave each other? It was so clear to her now that parts of them had remained with the other person all throughout the past month. She’d found herself thumbing through Wuthering Heights without knowing why. Marcus bought the pasta sauce. (She wouldn’t know this for another month, but he’d also found himself drawn to _Iris_ for reasons that had everything to do with missing her).

She longed to lean over and kiss him, to tell him she’d gladly go with him to Trikru and make the pasta sauce they kept coming back to like a boomerang. But she recognized the building in front of them – his apartment complex – and decided she could wait a little longer. So instead, she settled for words.

“I’d say we could go make it now, but…” she trailed off, and it was his turn to laugh.

“That’s a bit of a trek,” he said. “And I’ve done my fair share of travelling today.”

Another clue, she thought. Apparently he’d done all of this today; the tuxedo, the flowers, the song. He'd definitely driven up from Trikru today. The kids had to be involved somehow, she just didn’t know how. Yet.

But Abby Griffin was not a patient woman.

“Are you going to tell me about that?” she asked, finally giving in to the constant chanting in the back of her mind that yearned to know the truth about his excursion. “About how you got here?”

He pulled into the parking structure, kept his eyes on the lot in front of him, scanned for empty spots.

“You don’t believe I would’ve shown up at the dance on my own?” he asked, teasing. Because they both knew it was true: Marcus Kane was not the type of man to don a tux, grab a bouquet of roses, and show up at the Arkadia High School prom to an accompaniment of her favorite song. The whole thing was too flashy, too showy, too public to have originated in his mind. It reeked of the kids, and he had to know she knew it.

If Marcus had had his way, they probably would have met at the apartment, had a discussion about what happened, both apologized, broken down a little in each other’s arms and promised never to leave again. Then she would have leaned in to press a gentle kiss to his mouth that turned not-so-gentle afterwhile, and he would have wrapped his arms around her waist and carried her to the bedroom (or the couch, which was more likely considering how absolutely starved they were for each other) and made love to her until they forgot what had caused them to break up in the first place.

His way, she was forced to admit as she felt herself aching in places that had gone frustrated and dormant for the past month, would have had its perks.

But someone else had gotten their way with him, placed this idea in his head. And honestly, Abby couldn’t say she minded it. She couldn’t say she ever desired to be the center of attention at a prom filled with kids her daughter’s age, but the image of Marcus waiting for her on the ballroom floor, elegant and refined in his black tuxedo, with an apology written in his trembling hands and adoration etched in his gaze…she’d never forget it.

It was a gift she hadn’t asked for but she’d received nonetheless, and it felt only right to thank the person who had given it to her. That person, every ounce of her suspected, hadn’t been the man in the seat next to her.

“I believe you _went_ of your own free will,” she said with a knowing, soft smile. “No one brainwashed you into being there. But you’ll have to forgive me for thinking it’s not your style.”

Guiding the car into a spot next to the door, he shook his head.

“All right. It wasn’t my idea. But I need you to know…” he stopped, turned the car off, stared at her with an intensity she’d never seen in him until now. Certainly, he’d been intense on the night they’d broken up. They both had, in their way. But this was different, something not fueled by disappointment or fear or rage: this was made of pure, unfettered devotion. “I didn’t hesitate. Not for a second. Once she told me what she was thinking, and I thought about it, I knew the only thing I wanted – the only thing I’d wanted that whole damn time – was to see you again. At least once.”

He regarded her in the low light, his expression mirroring her emotions: the memories of the breakup were still fresh, painful, aching. Yet she knew beyond a sliver of doubt that it wouldn’t happen again – of that, she was confident. And that knowledge was a balm on the burn, a pill that cured the ailment of losing him.

“I wanted to see you again, too,” Abby said softly. She unbuckled her seatbelt, rotated to face him. “I tried to call you.”

“When?”

Abby paused. Earlier that night now felt like a lifetime in the past, a story of a life that no longer belonged to her. “A few hours ago.”

“Oh,” Marcus said. “I was…busy.”

“I believe it,” she said, meaning every word. He didn’t have to explain himself now. “It doesn’t matter.”

“No, it does,” he insisted solemnly, surprising her for a moment until he continued. “Abby, I never really apologized to you. What I said at the dance…it wasn’t even half of what I had in mind.”

Abby shook her head, opened her mouth to tell him he didn’t have to apologize. To tell him his apology had been showing up at Arkadia’s prom night to sweep her off her feet, to tell him this was a matter they both should leave in the past, where it belonged. But he was quicker, and the conversation continued in his direction.

“I overreacted when you told me about Jaha. I just couldn’t stop thinking about…” he paused, swallowed hard, and she reached out to take his hand. Although she already knew what he was going to say – Raven had known it before any of them, probably – she still needed to hear the words from his mouth, feel the rush of warmth they’d bring. To know how deeply he cared for her, adored her, loved her. Then to reassure him he’d never go through that again: not so long as she had a say in things.

Abby Griffin would always have a say in things.

“About what could happen to you. If we were together and Jaha released the footage. Being here with you tonight is selfish, I know, and I’ll always be a little worried about what’s coming next. But I can’t do it, Abby. I can’t be without you. And I hope you can forgive me for that.”

“Marcus,” she blurted, unable to endure his suffering any longer. It caused a physical pain to radiate from her heart through the length of her body, a throbbing she could only stop by telling him the truth. “The footage is gone. We don’t have to worry about it.”

His gaze turned delighted, jubilant, if disbelieving.

“How do you know?” he asked, his skepticism hiding a glimmer of hope.

“Raven told me,” she said. “The kids figured out a way to erase it. They didn’t tell me, and they didn’t tell you, but they wouldn’t lie. They’ve broken rules, shattered the school’s code of conduct, but they haven’t done that.”

_If there’s one thing they haven’t done in all of this, they haven’t lied._

Marcus nodded, the truth dawning on him like a sunrise. “It’s really gone?”

A smile was playing at the corners of his lips, contagious, and she found herself grinning as well.

“It’s really gone,” she said. “So you don’t have to feel guilty about this. Any of it. And you never did.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but she was in no mood to be cut off.

“I’m more than capable of making my own choices,” she said, “and even if those security tapes were still around, I’d choose you. You're more important to me than any threat Jaha could throw our way.”

A familiar warmth pooled in the depths of his brown eyes; the one she’d seen when he picked her up on their first date, the one he’d worn when they sang together in the car, the one she’d cherished when they embraced in the hotel parking lot. It was part awe, part adoration, and part determination. It was all for her.

Only one other man had looked at Abby Griffin that way, and it had been long enough since then that she’d almost forgotten what it felt like. The iron heat of realization that churned in her core, the tiny licks of fire that spread over her skin when her brain came to that one, simple conclusion. _Love._

“From now on,” Marcus said, the depth of his gaze a promise in and of itself, “it doesn’t matter what we’re facing. No matter what happens, we’re in this together.”

_Is he…?_

Probably not, she decided. For God’s sake, they’d only gotten back together three hours ago. And they’d only been together for a few months. And they were both logical enough people, people who wouldn’t jump into something without considering it together first. She’d done this before, and she didn’t know – but she guessed – that she wasn’t his first.

Besides, he wasn’t down on one knee.

But it didn’t stop a rush of elation from coursing through her, stopping her heart and making her go hot and cold from her head to her feet. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t imagined it – being married to Marcus Kane. She’d thought about it more often than she’d ever admit. Having been in love before made it easier to distinguish what she was feeling now, to discern why she was feeling it, and to reason whether it was the infatuation inherent with a new relationship or something stronger, something deeper, something that lived in her core.

If it had evaporated after their fight, she would have called what it certainly would have been: lust. It had been a good long while since anyone had done the things Marcus Kane did to her, a seemingly impossible length of time that would have forced Callie to throw her together with some random man she knew in hopes of getting laid. She’d managed on her own, as she could – she was a grown woman, and that was something she could handle herself – but it was different with someone else.

It was different with Marcus.

But she’d stayed stuck on him for weeks after they ended things. In Raven’s terms, they “passed the shelf life” for a continued one-night stand, for anything superficial. And if she’d needed evidence that she loved Marcus, that was it.

He went red, and she realized he must have figured out why she was being quiet. Her face burned, fiery and hot, and embarrassed, she felt herself flush.

“I, um-“ he started, stopped, gave the awkward little laugh that she had so sorely missed. “I just meant that I won’t do what I did again. Even if Jaha comes back – God forbid – I’ll be by your side. As long as you want me there.”

She averted her gaze, noticed their combined embarrassment had been enough to thoroughly fog the car windows. Her heart was pounding and her head was spinning, and with that conflicting, roiling sea of emotion she did the only thing her brain could think to do when words failed her so spectacularly.

She leaned in and kissed him.

It wasn’t as gentle as she’d imagined, nor as soft as the ones they’d shared between student visitors at the dance. It was unexpected enough that Marcus gave a little sound of surprise as she crashed into him, a noise that fell somewhere between a grunt and a soft, yearning groan. That sound, an emblem of his complete unraveling for her, was enough to propel her into his lap as a pulsing, aching heat began building between her thighs. This was a dance they’d done before; they each knew the steps, had them memorized.

She glanced down at the mark her heels had left last time they’d done this, remembered it fondly. And yet despite the familiarity it always felt as though she learned something new each time they connected, some new part of her awakening that had lain dormant for a year. There was something rife with discovery in the ease of it all, in the way his steady hands slid up her thighs, the way their kisses turned hungry and the way his mouth remembered the path to her pulse point, the place that sent shockwaves of yearning through her.

This time, she’d do her best not to lean back against the horn.

She ground her hips against him, the duo of heat of the friction between them and his mouth on the hollow of her throat nearly unbearable. The sensation of her wetness would have been embarrassing under any other circumstances – she was a grown woman, for God’s sake, she could control herself long enough to at least unzip his pants – but a month had put her into withdrawals that had her mouth watering at the luscious decadence of being with him.

“Abby…wait,” he gasped between sloppy, open-mouthed kisses. That one word – four letters that took longer than expected to break through the barrier of pleasure that had built in her brain – froze her in her tracks, her hand inches from his hardened length. She leaned away from him just enough to look in his eyes, saw his pupils blown wide with desire. If his gaze (and pants) were to be believed, he wanted this just as much as she did. “Do you…” he paused, still panting, “want to go upstairs? To bed? We don’t-”

She silenced him with another starving kiss, swallowing his words as her tongue slid deftly against his. He tasted like the punch they’d barely gotten to drink, fruity and tangy, the sweetness of him sending shockwaves of sensation through every inch of her.

There was no way in hell she’d make it up to his bed. Even the elevator, as close as it was, was out of the question. Her desire for Marcus Kane was a well that ran deeper than she ever could have known, and if she didn’t have him now…

“No,” she whispered, smiling with kiss-swollen lips when her fingers closed around the length of his hardened cock. He groaned, a sound she’d heard in her dreams, a sound so unstitched with need it nearly drove her crazy. This hadn’t been in either of their plans for the night, she knew, but it was the only path on which they’d found themselves. A scenic route, to be certain. And she intended to enjoy it for all it had to offer. “I want-“ she kissed him – “you here. Now. Please, Marcus-“

He needed no further encouragement.

She gasped as the scratchiness of his beard was smoothed by the softness of his mouth roaming down the exposed expanse of her chest, his hands winding up her back to find the zipper to her dress and tug.

There were things he remembered about her that she’d forgotten about herself, things that drew moans from somewhere deep within her when he took one of her hardened nipples into his mouth and traced her peak with the searing heat of his tongue. There were things about her he remembered that she’d forgotten, places she liked to be touched and stroked and kissed that brought forth barely-muffled cries from a place she hadn’t known was empty.

There were things she remembered about him that he’d forgotten about himself, things that drew groans from somewhere deep within him when her soft fingers finally moved to the zipper on his pants, one hand wrapped tightly in his hair and the other tracing him, teasing him, leading him to the edge and pulling him back from it just as he was about to fall. There with things about him she remembered that he seemed to have forgotten, places he liked to be touched and stroked and kissed that drew animalistic sounds that had their source in his pounding, racing heart.

And when they finally came against the heated leather seats, an explosion of names and sighs and an unleashed bliss that curled toes and blurred vision, it was an ordinary brand of extraordinary. This was but one of the things that had haunted them both since that fateful night, the sensation of it breathtakingly exquisite. But there were a thousand ways they knew each other, a million things on the tips of their tongues, countless heartbeats they wanted to spend in each other’s arms.

As they came down from the high, ragged breaths evening out and a few last kisses peppered on salty skin, they both knew that this meant more than the overpowering lust that conceived it. It meant forgiveness, it meant adoration, it meant cherishing each other above everything and anything else. It was an apology without words and a makeup without flowers.

Their lips met for one last time as he softened inside her, the temperature in the car cooling as the sweat on their skin dried. Neither of them said it. It was in the air, on their lips as they smiled, in their pulse as their heartbeats synchronized.

They didn’t say it, but meant it all the same.

***

“If this was our prom night,” he said with a soft smile, “it’s too bad we never got to share a dance.”

Abby smiled, snuggled closer to him on the couch as his arm tightened around her.

“Well, it’s not my fault you’re so damn popular. No one asked me about the quiz I’m giving on Monday. That crowd was all for you, Marcus.”

He chuckled, a low rumbling that resonated inside her. “The allure of nostalgia,” he said. “They’ll forget about me soon enough.” Then he paused, feigned shock. “You’re giving them a quiz on Monday? The Monday after _prom weekend_?”

It was her turn to laugh, to give him a playful slap on the shoulder. “Don’t try to tell me you never gave quizzes after holiday weekends. Clarke came back to school after winter break to a test in your class, _Kane_.”

“I had my reasons for that,” he insisted stubbornly. “It couldn’t be moved.”

“Right,” Abby said, rolling her eyes. “Just like my quiz can’t be moved. Although…” she trailed off, lost in thought. Would it really be so horrible if she moved the quiz to Tuesday? She wouldn’t be getting much sleep tonight. That was all but cemented; the digital display on his oven read 4:30, and neither of them had so much as yawned. She intended to spend as much time tomorrow with Marcus as she could: Clarke, she knew, would be doing the same with Lexa. Their days were numbered, at least in terms of how often they could see each other in-person.

The last thing Abby wanted to do was worry about grading papers on Monday night. Truthfully, she’d much rather come home, prepare something light for Clarke, and collapse into bed. And somewhat less ethically, she wondered if rewarding her kids with a quiz for getting her back together with Marcus Kane was the right thing to do. She shouldn’t let her teaching be affected by her personal relationships, she knew, but…

“You’re considering it, aren’t you?” he asked, smug.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she responded, leaning away to take in every inch of his triumphant smirk.

“Don’t play innocent with me, Abby Griffin. You’re going to move that quiz.”

She paused, wondered for a moment if it was even worth arguing with him. It wasn’t.

“Fine,” she admitted. “But it’s your fault. If you hadn’t kept me up late, I’d be asleep by now.”

“Something tells me your kids won’t complain,” he said, and the charade was up. She laughed.

“I’ll tell them you convinced me to postpone it,” she said. “That’ll boost your popularity.”

“Or,” he suggested with a grin, “you could just tell them you went to the dance. That you had the entire prom experience, from start to finish.”

Abby frowned at him, confusion dissolving into a wry smile.

“We did everything out of order if this was prom night,” she said. “I’m pretty sure you should’ve picked me up at my house. We should have danced together. And the sex was supposed to come after we went back to your place, in your bed. Not the parking lot.”

“You know an awful lot about how these things are supposed to go,” he remarked, bemused. Abby turned away to hide her blush, remembering how her prom night had gone when she was a teenager. They hadn’t been anything exceptional. Now, more than twenty years later, she couldn’t even remember the boy’s name. Obviously, it paled in comparison to the night she’d shared with Marcus. Even if, she thought with a rapidly widening smile, they hadn’t done anything according to tradition.

“A few of those things, I can’t fix,” Marcus said. His eyes sparkled in the dim light of his apartment as he spoke, and Abby began to suspect he was up to something. He, much like she herself, was always up to something. “But the night isn’t over.”

He stood abruptly, pulled his phone out of his pocket and strode determinedly across the room to connect it to a single speaker that sat on a shelf next to his television. Abby watched as he pressed buttons and scrolled through menus until a song came on, quiet, familiar.

Part of her wanted to get up – to meet him halfway in the question she knew was coming – but part of her wanted to let this happen organically, in the way it was meant to. It had been years since a man had asked her to dance, and she wanted to savor this for everything it was worth (and it was worth quite a bit).

As he moved toward her with an airy, almost timid smile, she realized she wanted to remember this quieter, subtler version of the prom in years to come: the way his appearance in his tux made her heart skip, an intoxicating combination of dark hair and dark eyes and dark fabric that made her knees weak. The way the soft guitar in the background combined with the twinkling city – the ever-glowing skyscrapers, the tiny pedestrians scurrying along in the embrace of the lightening nightfall, the faint sound of sirens that accompanied city life – and formed its own symphony, a conglomeration of sights and sounds and, in Marcus’ arms, security.

She knew she didn’t look nearly as fresh as she’d appeared before she’d gone to the dance; the evening (and more accurately, the events that had transpired after they’d gone back to the city) had added a sheen over her foundation, pooled tiny blurs of black mascara and eyeliner beneath her eyes. Her hair was no longer styled in the braid she’d adopted for her night of chaperoning: it instead flowed down her shoulders as it would have just before going to bed, just after pulling out the ponytail holder and brushing it from its style.

Abby Griffin knew she was in no way dance-ready, sitting on Marcus Kane’s couch, her bare feet snuggled against the plush texture of his navy carpet, her dress hopelessly wrinkled from their earlier lovemaking. This was a night read from back to front, right to left, every detail inverted right down to her appearance. But her date didn’t seem to care as he stared at her with eyes like the sun: bright, warm, hopeful.

“Abby Griffin,” he said, offering her his hand to guide her off the couch. “May I have this dance?”

She felt herself smile, felt worry and exhaustion evaporate as she slid her right hand into his and stood up against the background of the shining city.

“Absolutely,” she said as they moved toward the center of the room, careful to avoid the coffee table lurking in the corner. Marcus then slid his arm around her waist, pulling her close enough to him to feel the heat radiating through his wrinkled white shirt, to set her on fire with anticipation, excitement, a buoyed contentment.

_“I walked across an empty land, I knew the pathway like the back of my hand. I felt the earth beneath my feet, sat by the river and it made me complete…”_

Her right hand moved beneath his shoulder while her left moved to the back of his neck, her fingers absentmindedly running through the hair at his nape. They swayed back and forth gently, slowly, twin grins gracing each of their faces as the lights of the city and the moon provided a canvas for their art. As the music drifted throughout the hallways of his home, a place in which he’d once found only emptiness, Abby’s grin softened from elation to contemplation.

“I know this song,” she remarked, her voice soft.

Marcus was quiet for a few moments. “What do you think of it?”

_“Oh simple thing, where have you gone…”_

And suddenly that hole in her chest came back, if only for a few moments. The lyric resonated deeply enough to bring that sensation back – the one of constant, unending aching, a turmoil she knew she could end but kept alive out of the slightest of hopes. Hadn’t she asked herself that question, time and time again? Where had the simple thing between them gone? How had they lost it so quickly? Could a simple phone call bring it back?

The answer, she now knew. Part of her thought she’d always known, somewhere deep down. But her brain would never acknowledge it until she had undeniable proof.

It had never left.

_“I’m getting old and I need something to rely on…”_

She looked up at him, a man molded of sunlight and stardust, a man who held her like a buried treasure and breathed her in like oxygen. Cherished her like she was the answer to a question he’d been asking himself for years, if not for his whole life, and he couldn’t quite believe his luck in finding the right response. Raven had been right: everything was hidden in his gaze, if one knew how to interpret it.

For her, it had been the opposite.

How she’d begun to pride herself on not needing another man – how she’d almost convinced herself never to take the chance she’d taken with Jake, just in case it proved too much. How wrong, how hopelessly, horribly wrong she’d been. She and Marcus were a paradox, a maze of contradictions. They didn’t need each other to survive. They weren’t characters in a cheesy romance novel, their fates weren’t intertwined, their names weren’t etched on each other’s forearms. But they were both desperately in need of one thing, the thing life had pulled out of their grasp at a time when they needed it most.

Hope.

And in that way, they truly did need each other. This thing, whatever they were calling it…it was hope. He was hope. After all, what else could she refer to him as? ”Boyfriend” seemed too casual, too infantile, “husband” technically incorrect, "soulmate" too cheesy. But that one four-letter word fit him like a glove.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Marcus murmured, and she realized she’d never given him an answer to his question.

“Sorry,” she apologized. She was too tired for the truths spinning around in her head, but she could give him half of them. She could say them without saying them at all, and that would be enough. “I was thinking about the lyrics. They’re beautiful.”

They continued to sway, moving slowly around the room as Marcus guided her around the velvety expanse of the rug.

“That’s the reason it’s one of my favorites,” Marcus said. His eyes twinkled as he spoke, and Abby surmised she’d stumbled upon a hidden passion. “It’s beautifully written. The imagery, the varied meanings…it’s true poetry.”

_“Is this the place we used to love? Is this the place that I’ve been dreaming of?”_

His eyes told her more than his lips ever could: he knew what she was thinking. He was making these connections himself, planting their relationship in the lyrics and watching it grow again before them. Abby took a deep breath, her chest expanding to press against his.

“It’s a little deep,” she said with a smirk, wound her fingers deeper into his hair to let him know she was kidding. “I’m doing more thinking than dancing.”

He let out a laugh that was more an exhale than a chuckle, the skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkling as he smiled.

“Well, I thought you might expect it,” he said, “given the subject I teach.”

She did laugh then, tilting her head back to release the loud, weightless thing that soared straight from her heart to her lips. Her lips pursed as she made a playful nose of amusement, the music beginning to crescendo as the sun’s first rays of orange light peeked beyond the skyscrapers.

“I should have assumed.”

The twinkle in his eyes grew a little dangerous, an expression that evaporated every ounce of breath from her lungs as he pressed her closer to him and left her a little dizzy. Being close to him felt good enough to be either sinful or heavenly, and she had little interest in distinguishing between the two. 

The fabric of her dress and his shirt may as well have disintegrated to nothing, to embers beneath them, as he leaned in. The combination of his beard tickling her ear, the warmth of his breath, and exhaustion’s tightening embrace made her knees less-than-reliable, and she was thankful for the strength of his grip.

“You know what they say about assumptions,” he murmured, his voice low enough to draw heat to parts of her body that she thought would’ve been satiated by their romp in the car. But she’d gone a month without him: perhaps this was to be expected.

Then he pushed her away, extending his arm above her to spin her in a circle. It was the most girlish she’d felt in a long time, the movement endearingly awkward with an almost adolescent inexperience, the room around her lost in a blur of slowly-brightening sky and cream-colored walls. Her only anchor to reality was his hand in hers, an assurance that he wouldn’t let her fall. Enjoying the feeling of coming untethered to reality and addicted to the sound of his laughter, she spun for a little longer than necessary.

_“And if you have a minute why don’t we go, talk about it somewhere only we know…”_

Abby giggled as he pulled her back to his chest, fighting dizziness by leaning her head in the crook of his neck. His arms steadied her, pressing her to him with a promise they left unspoken.

“And I’m not even drunk,” she whispered through soft chuckles, fighting to keep her steps even as the world continued to spin off its axis.

“Well,” Marcus said, “that’s assuming the punch was all…punch. I wouldn’t put it past Monty and Jasper to spike it when you weren’t looking.”

“I’ve already proven I can’t be trusted with Jasper Jordan’s alcohol,” she remarked, relieved to hear him give an exhale of a laugh in response. Apparently, it wasn’t too soon to joke about it.

“Neither of us is fit to chaperone a dance,” he replied. “We’re probably the ones who need chaperoning.”

Steadiness returning in slower stumbles and deeper breaths, Abby raised her head to stare at him again. There was an all-consuming happiness radiating from every ounce of his being, from his mussed hair and amber eyes down to his polished shoes, and for a moment she allowed herself to think about their future. She allowed herself to think about when Clarke went to school, when the house was empty, if she and Marcus could replay this same scenario in her living room with a soft song urging them on in the background.

Whether or not there was a ring on her finger seemed secondary. A ring almost felt like an afterthought, a concrete thing to signify what they both already knew. Yet when she thought about that time – a year ahead – it wasn’t tinged with unbearable sadness. Not now. In the past, those visions had been dark, empty, replete with empty hallways and dinner tables set for one.

Now she thought she might have to break out an extra place setting.

_“So why don’t we go, somewhere only we know…”_

The music faded gradually, giving way to the quiet of early morning and the soft sounds of their breathing. Abby pressed a gentle kiss to his jaw, his beard tickling her lips: a thank-you rather than a move to initiate anything.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Marcus answered her with a yawn.

“Tired?”

He frowned. “A little. It’s been a long day, Abby.”

She could only imagine. Him showing up at the dance had been beyond her wildest dreams, but he’d known what was coming. He’d known what he was walking into, had probably played every scenario out in his head to the point of exhaustion. His tiredness wasn’t just physical, wasn’t just an aching in his muscles that reminded him of the six-hour drive he had waiting for him the next day. It was emotional, too.

“I know,” she answered. Then, a little softer, “but we made it.”

They both smiled, recognizing the double meaning living in her words. In their hearts, she thought, maybe they’d always known they would. It was just a matter of solving the maze to finding each other again, making all the wrong turns at first and learning from their mistakes.

“We did,” Marcus said, his words falling between yawns. “We did.”

Still swaying gently to music that played on in their heads and hearts, Abby felt exhaustion beginning to claim her, too.

“Next year, you’re chaperoning with me,” she said, past the point of caring about whether or not such a proposition was too forward. He’d said things that also straddled that line, and she needed to talk about this now. She needed to talk about this on reserves of sleep, before the resolve to discuss it left her in the dust of wakefulness, eclipsed by the sheer joy of seeing him again. “I can’t do this again.”

Whether she was talking about the dance or something bigger, she didn’t have the energy to figure out.

“Next year…” he paused, a confused smile dawning below his tired eyes. “Are you suggesting Octavia should sneak me in again?”

_Octavia. I knew it._

But talking about the girl and her undoubtedly extensive plans for their reunion would take the conversation on a detour, and on her last vestiges of energy she didn’t know if it would return to the main route. Abby couldn’t take that chance. For now, her students’ shenanigans were a discussion reserved for the morning.

“No,” she said. “That’s not what I meant. What I’m saying is-“ she paused, took a deep breath, “I think you should apply for the principal job.”

“Jaha’s job?” Marcus said, his words barely audible. “Abby, after everything…isn’t that a risk?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, pretending she hadn’t spent much of the past month thinking about it. Byrne was being brought on full-time – that much she knew – but there were other ways he could come back. The kids obviously loved him. He had the qualifications. Jaha had left in disgrace, having barely been allowed to terminate his contact early. And now that the footage was gone, there was nothing standing in his way. 

He was quiet. So quiet, in fact, that her pulse began to pick up and her mind began to wander into unexplored territory, catching itself on brambles and stumbling on tree roots of doubt. What if he didn’t want to come back? What if he was perfectly happy six hours away? Trikru was a beautiful campus, and she wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t want to come back to Arkadia after living there.

“I’d have to stay the rest of the year at Trikru,” he said, reminding her his contract wasn’t yet up. But then he said the thing she’d been waiting to hear, the words that soothed her racing heart and restored breath to her lungs.

“It would be nice to go back to Arkadia again. To see the kids. If the district would consider my application, after the fallout with Jaha.”

Abby laughed. “Jaha isn’t too popular right now,” she said. “Leaving in the middle of the year for a better offer wasn’t a smart move. I’ve heard his name cursed in more ways than I can count.”

She didn’t add that a few of those times, it had been her doing the cursing. And not for reasons related to his departure from the district.

“Abby,” Marcus said, pulling away just enough to take each of her hands in his. He’d turned solemn, serious, contemplative. “They’re going to have a lot of applicants, and because I just left…they might not consider me.”

“But they might. If they know how good you are with the kids, they would,” Abby insisted. “You have experience. You worked there before. And the bond you have with them – with your students – it’s unusual, Marcus. It’s special. I can’t see why they wouldn’t want to you continue that.”

He turned quiet again, and she began to suspect this was about more than his resume.

“I don’t want to get your hopes up,” he blurted suddenly, gazing at her with a mixture of determination and devotion. “If they don’t pick me, promise me you won’t be heartbroken. I can’t bear the thought of you-“

“Marcus,” she interrupted, breaking the connection between their hands to move closer. “I know. I know it’s a risk. But…”

She paused as a quote, disembodied, came floating into her mind out of the room’s dim lights and ashen shadows. And although the words sounded odd coming from her mouth – stilted, uneven, a far cry from the poetry he spoke when drunk – they persisted, drumming against her tongue and buzzing on her lips. They continued tingling in the tips of her fingers as she pressed her palm gently against the side of his face. And as he leaned into her touch, she whispered what she remembered, the only language that could convince him to take such a giant leap of faith.

“I cannot live without my life,” she said, and his eyes widened: he was shocked that she remembered. “I cannot live without my soul.”

His arms came up to hold her against him then, the warmth of his breath on her skin giving her goosebumps as she kept speaking.

“You can’t make me promise I won’t react if they don’t pick you,” she said. “Because that’s a promise I can’t make. I care about you too much to take that news in stride, Marcus. But it’s an opportunity for us, and I wanted to share it before the application period closed. And if anyone deserves that job, after everything they’ve been through, it’s you.”

Marcus smiled, running his fingertips up and down the small of her back.

“I could make a fair case for you,” he said. “I’m not the only one who’s been through a lot this year.”

“I don’t have the qualifications,” Abby said. “Jaha gave me that job because he knew I needed something that wasn’t at the hospital, and Arkaida needed science teachers. I wouldn’t be considered to be their principal. But for you, I have hope.”

His smile grew by a few molars, his teeth blindingly white in the low light. “Well, if you have hope…so do I.”

Abby felt her lips beginning to pull into a smile that mirrored his, her tone warm with the heat that radiated between them.

“So you’ll do it?”

“I’ll do it,” he said, leaning in close.

This, she thought, felt more intimate than what they’d shared in his car earlier that night; a paradox, considering their mouths weren’t even touching. But this was about more than sensation and lust – this was their future – and she couldn’t help thinking as the tall buildings outside his window shone with the first drops of sunlight that it might just be a bright one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IF THIS HITS 400 KUDOS, I'LL LITERALLY EXPLODE INTO A BALL OF HAPPINESS AND KABBY FEELS. :') Even if it doesn't, you guys are the greatest and I love everyone who's reading my writing. *hugs*


	26. Of Rainstorms and Phone Calls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know I said there was only going to be one more chapter, but now there's going to be two: one more and the epilogue. This one just wouldn't end, and I think when you read it you'll understand why! :P

The sound of rain, quiet, comforting as it drizzled against the roof of his apartment, was nothing compared to the soft humming that rumbled through his chest. As his fingers moved through her hair with a feather-light touch – not enough to wake her up, but enough to convey his feelings – she heard him humming the notes to her favorite song. The song they danced to, the song they sang along to, the song that was more theirs than it was hers, now. He’d slowed it down, made it into something of a ballad instead of the anthem she’d claimed as hers for years. But surprisingly, she thought, it worked this way.

Abby smiled against his chest, felt the warmth of him radiating through her and keeping all thoughts of the wet cold outside at bay. For now, they were inside, content, and warm. For now she was laying beside the man she loved as he hummed her favorite song and stroked her hair in a sea of soft sheets and plush pillows. For now there was no distance between them save for the long-sleeved shirt he’d insisted upon giving her to serve as a nightgown; his body and singing giving her more warmth than thin cotton could ever provide.

For now, everything was perfect.

She didn’t want it to end. But her stomach coiled in knots as she remembered what today was, what day of the week they’d arrived at after their reunion last night. Time had cast them out of their Saturday paradise and into a Sunday purgatory, suspended between the heaven of remaining in each other’s arms and the hell of being torn from them yet again. It seemed unspeakably cruel to have gotten him back so quickly and to be forced to leave him just as fast: one night was but a heartbeat when compared to the lifespan of loneliness she’d felt without him.

But there was nothing to be done for now, she reminded herself. He’d either apply for the principal job or he wouldn’t, and either way they’d be fine. They’d find a way, much as they always did. And that knowledge made his song sing even more sweetly, made the steady pounding of raindrops into a comforting cacophony that guided her down a path of dim light and bright love.

So, taking great care to keep her breathing even and the mirage of sleep intact, she snuggled closer to him. His arm instinctively pressed her closer, a warm weight that was both protective and gentle. If he suspected what she was doing, he didn’t say a word. Instead he kept going with the song, his clear voice hitting each note perfectly in time with the metronome pattern of the rain. With her head on his chest she could feel the vibrations of each note as it coursed through him, the beating of his heart and the air whistling through his lungs as he kept going.

His singing and stroking sent her into a kind of euphoric daze, and she felt her eyelids growing heavy yet again as she rested her head on his chest. God only knew how long they’d been asleep – they hadn’t even gone to bed until four o’clock, and then, with a shocking amount of energy considering all they’d been through, Abby proceeded to climb on top of him and do most of the things that had run through her head in the past few months. Things they never could have done in the cramped leather seats of his car.

She would’ve been embarrassed at what little restraint they had, the raw, needy sounds that slipped from between their lips as they clung to each other, but pushed her thoughts away with the reassurance that they hadn’t seen each other in a month. This was probably normal. To need each other in every way, to desire each other in a million different aspects…she’d spent what felt like an eternity needing him, and last night had been just a blink in that lifetime.

Her thoughts began to slow, as if walking through sand. Her muscles relaxed against the satiny smoothness of his bedsheets, a faint tingling running through her as he hit the chorus for a second time. She’d heard him sing before, that night in the car, but it hadn’t been like this. This was a conglomeration of sensation and emotion that was as intimate as it was breathtaking, as meaningful as sex and twice as powerful.

Because this, this soft crooning meant only for her and the pounding of the rain to hear, required more than just a carnal knowledge of her body. It meant knowing her, knowing the lyrics to the song that opened her heart, knowing what was important to her and offering her comfort.

Jake had done many things for her, wonderful things, things she missed now and knew she’d always ache for. But he, insisting he had a horrible voice, never sang to her. And certainly not in bed. No longer pretending to doze, Abby knew as sleep wrapped its arms around her that she’d stumbled upon another of Marcus’ unique intricacies, much like his voracious love for literature and nature. Another thing that made him hers, another piece to his puzzle.

Marcus Kane was a problem not meant to be solved, but to regard with awe and adoration.

He arrived at the guitar solo soon enough, and then the mirage was shattered: he stopped suddenly, as if he’d forgotten the words, and she couldn’t resist a chuckle. Of course the English teacher would stop singing when the words evaporated.

“You’re not going to keep going?” she murmured against his chest, pressing a kiss to the skin just above his heart. He chuckled, and she cracked open one eyelid to see a blush spreading across his cheeks.

“You heard that?” he asked, one side of his mouth quirking into a half-smile.

“All of it,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, the blush creeping down his neck, a soft crimson flush that she found – for lack of a better word – adorable. “I apologize.”

Abby laughed, watched the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiled in response. “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she said. “You could have been a music teacher, with your voice.”

He scoffed. “Doubtful,” he said. “I think you might be a little biased, Mrs. Griffin.”

“I might be,” she admitted. “But you can carry a tune, Mr. Kane.”

Watching him try to accept the compliment made her heart swell in her chest – judging by his tiny nod and the gentle tremor of his hand as he reached up to take hers, the man really had no clue how to accept kind words – and not for the first time, she wondered how long it had been since he’d heard them. What was he doing, before she came along? Besides working at The Ark? She knew enough about his personal life, at least the aspects regarding his work and his mother. But a man like him deserved more than just the half a life he’d been living, and she was honored to be able to give that to him.

They were quiet for a time, Abby scooting up a little further to rest her head on his heart. Soft rain spoke for them, drumming a staccato that synchronized to their breathing, and she gazed outside at the gray-skied city through the open blinds. Had he gotten up to open them, or had they forgotten to close them in their craving for each other?

“It’s raining,” he said, desperate to get the topic of conversation away from himself.

“It is,” she agreed.

“I had no idea it was supposed to rain today.”

Abby gave a low hum of consideration, remembering a night when he’d said something similar. A night that now, felt like a lifetime ago. “If it gets bad, you could always stay here. Or if we stay here long enough and we’re both trapped…” she trailed off, feeling the effect her insinuation had on him as his cock twitched beneath her. They really were insatiable.

“I’m trying not to get my hopes up,” Marcus said, fingers stroking the skin just above her ass. It was a wonder, she thought, that they’d been awake for less than five minutes and they were already showing signs of desire: he was already half-hard and she felt a slow burning simmering between her thighs.

 _Well_ , she thought. _We might as well do something about it._

“Hope is everything,” she whispered, lowering her lips to his as a roll of thunder sounded in the background. Her eyelids slipped closed of their own accord, her senses surrendering as her fingers moved through his hair and her tongue traced the length of his lower lip.

Taking her by surprise, Marcus pulled her close and flipped her onto her back. The maneuver contained more clumsiness than grace – the air was knocked out of her lungs on the impact – but it worked well enough as he settled between her legs.

“Are you all right?” he asked, staring down at her with genuine concern. Her lungs still burning, Abby could only nod and reach up to bury her hand in the hair at the back of his neck, guiding his lips back to hers in a hungry, passionate kiss.

Breath returned only to be stolen again by the warm pressure of his lips on her neck, his hands roaming beneath the covers to guide his shirt over her thighs and toward her stomach. His touch trailed a heat warmer than the hottest summer day in Arkadia, the sensation of being caressed by him enough to make her see stars. Something in the way he held her gave him the power to turn her mind off, to submerge her thoughts underwater and redirect the signals from her brain.

He melted her down to a pool of desire and unkempt yearning, a breathy moan escaping her as his mouth found the area just below her earlobe. Her hips bucked – a move more instinctual than controlled – and her trembling hands found purchase on his back as she ground against his hardened length. A groan, half desire and half blissful instinct, mirrored her own feelings as she writhed with pleasure against the mattress.

“I was…” he panted, staring at her with pupils blown wide, “trying to go slow.”

Abby laughed as she kept moving, all of her matched up with every inch of him. “Get that principal job, and we’ll have time to go slow. Right now, I think it’s about quantity over quality.”

He pretended to bristle, his eyes betraying the depth of his devotion. “I’d like to think there’s quality, too.”

“You already earned extra credit,” she said. His chuckle vibrated through her, and she smiled into his kiss.

“I hadn’t forgotten,” he said. And truthfully, neither had she: it was embarrassing, but more than once she’d caught herself staring at her kitchen counter and wondering how they could make things work there. How it would feel to have him inside her with her head resting against the wooden cabinets, her toes curling as she rocked back and forth on the cool marble.

“Neither had I.”

On a whim, she angled her head and trailed her tongue along his neck, sucking lightly at his pulse point. The sound he made when her mouth found it – that tiny little primal groan - sent heated chills through her body, made her grip on him tighten. She could never let go, knowing Marcus Kane could sound like this.

Then, without warning, she heard a sound that was decidedly not Marcus Kane.

A canned, vapid music filtered toward them from his nightstand, blaring from the side of the bed she’d been sleeping on. They froze, muscles hardening as the all-too-familiar notes played.

“My phone,” Abby breathed, her hands still resting on his back.

“Should you get it?” he asked with a tiny scowl, an expression she wished she could kiss away instead of worrying about who was on the other end of the line.

“I don’t know,” she answered, truthful. If it was Callie or anyone else from school, it could wait. The way they were going neither of them would last much longer, and she could hardly think of a problem so volatile it couldn’t wait five minutes for them to finish.

“See who it is,” Marcus suggested, rolling off of her to lean back against the pillows. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Abby grinned, wishing that statement were true for more than the next few hours. Her entire body ached as she registered his absence, cried out for him as she inched toward the side of the bed she’d adopted as her own. She fumbled for her phone against a few novels, fingers closing around the hard plastic of her case as the music continued playing. Unwilling to move from bed, she pulled the device down to her and read the name aloud.

“Clarke.”

She felt Marcus stiffen a little: they both knew her daughter wouldn’t be calling her at this hour without good reason.

“I…I have to take it,” Abby said, an apology hiding in her tone. Marcus reached over and squeezed her shoulder, pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek.

“I know,” he said, his tone making it clear no apology was necessary. “I’ll go get started on breakfast.”

Abby was a heartbeat away from making a joke about wanting _him_ for breakfast, but the gentle vibration of the phone in her hand stopped her. He pushed himself off the mattress into a seated position, his legs dangling off the end of the bed. She could tell from the stiffness in his posture that he wanted to know Clarke was all right just as much as she did.

There was only one way to find out, she thought with a sinking stomach. What if Lexa had broken up with her? What if something happened at the after-prom? What if they hadn’t made it to Luna’s after the dance and she was so absorbed with Marcus that she hadn’t heard her phone ringing? She’d checked it before bed last night, but what if…?

Hands trembling, she pressed the green button that she hoped would reveal the sound of her daughter’s voice.

“Hello?”

“Mom!” Clarke exclaimed, sounding completely normal, almost relieved. Abby allowed herself a deep, relaxed breath: her daughter was okay.

“Hey, honey,” she said with a smile aimed in Marcus’ direction. He sent one in her direction, apparently just as relieved at Clarke’s wellness as she was. His concern sent little flutters of emotion through her chest, and as she watched his toned form move toward the kitchen she vowed there would be an end to what they’d started before the phone call. “How was your night?”

“Great,” she responded, a smile evident in her tone. _Okay, so it wasn’t anything with Lexa. Good._

“That’s good,” Abby said, propping herself up against a pile of pillows. She was thrilled her daughter had had a good night, but shouldn’t she still be at Luna’s? Why was she calling her this early? A squint in the direction of Marcus’ digital clock did her no good – the device had been disconnected.

“I was calling to ask where you are,” Clarke said. She sounded a little embarrassed, and Abby felt her face flush with secondhand emotion. It hadn’t exactly crossed her mind to tell her daughter she was going back to his apartment after the dance. Such a revelation, she’d thought, would only leave her with mental images she could never expunge, and she had every intention of being home before her daughter stumbled sleepily into their home after a night of fun with friends.

“I’m with Marcus,” Abby said. The charade was up. “We went back to his apartment last night. I should have told you, honey. I’m sorry.”

Clarke laughed, and while Abby was relieved to hear the sound, she wasn’t sure why her revelation merited it.

“You’re still there?” Clarke asked. Abby frowned, turning to look out the window again. The clouds, dark grey and looming, blocked her view of the sun: there was no good way to tell what time it was. “Mom, it’s almost three o’clock.”

Abby almost dropped the phone. _Three o’clock? How the hell…_ How had they managed to sleep this late? Factoring out their escapade earlier – which couldn’t have taken any longer than ten minutes – they had slept for almost nine hours. The doctor in her knew that was to be expected, what with the evaporation of stress and the comfort being in Marcus’ arms supplied her. But the mother in her was mortified, her face growing hot as her stomach clenched in shame.

“Clarke, I’m so sorry,” she said, issuing a second apology as she sat up in his bed and leaned her head against the mahogany headboard. They collided with a dull _thunk,_ an explosion of pain she convinced herself she deserved. How could she have done this? Overlooked this?

“No, mom, it’s fine,” Clarke rushed to reassure her. “I wasn’t calling because of that. It’s just - I’m at home, and I wanted to know you were okay.” She paused, a deep breath translating as a rush of static. “I tried calling the home phone from Luna’s, but you didn’t pick up and I thought you were sleeping. And then I got home and you weren’t here, and it was late, so I…” she trailed off, and Abby was reminded that worrying was a two-way street. At least where the bond between mother and daughter was involved.

“I should have told you where I was going,” Abby admitted, guilt clawing at her chest. Her elation to have Marcus back shouldn’t have eclipsed her duty to tell her daughter what was happening. After Jake…she could understand her daughter’s fears.

“I figured you were going back to his apartment,” Clarke said. “I’m not upset. I only called because…I was getting a little worried. I didn’t want…”

_You were afraid of getting the same phone call I picked up a year and a half ago._

Drawing her knees up halfway to her chest, Abby waged war against the urge to apologize a thousand more times, blinked back a sea of tears.

“I’m okay,” she reassured her daughter, wishing she were here so she could draw her into a tight hug and never let go. _Well_ …she thought a little harder, remembered she was wearing Marcus’ shirt and nothing else, and Marcus was wearing nothing aside from his underwear. _Maybe I’d put on some real clothes first, and then hug her._

“I’m glad.”

An awkward lull consumed by thunder, then Clarke spoke again.

“How’s Kane?”

Abby grinned, the reality that she was in his apartment, in his bed, with him making breakfast for her in the other room washing over her with a wave of blissful contentment. Everything felt right again, and she knew from Clarke’s tone that she had played a role in reassembling that puzzle.

“We have everything figured out,” she said. She couldn’t possibly have imagined the sigh of relief on the other line. “We’re gonna be okay.”

“Is he going back to Trikru tonight?” Clarke asked. Abby nodded, forgetting for a moment that she couldn’t see her over the phone.

“He is.”

“Oh,” Clarke said, seemingly disappointed. “I had a few questions I wanted to ask him about the assignment Byrne gave us. She gave us homework on prom weekend. And some of this…I don’t think we ever went over it in class, and I can’t find it in the textbook.”

Clarke would never outwardly complain about the work – not until it reached a boiling point – but Abby could sense something simmering beneath the surface.

“I can put him on,” Abby said, the scent of apples wafting from the kitchen and making her mouth water. Already halfway out the door, her bare feet clenching against the coolness of his wooden floor, she asked, “Do you want me to get him? He’s right here.”

“I don’t want to take away from your time,” Clarke said. “I have his email address.”

Abby grinned, knowing her daughter would certainly refuse to talk to him if she knew she’d be conversing with her ex-Government teacher wearing nothing but his underwear.

“I don’t think he’d mind. Would you, Marcus?”

Marcus, standing hunched over the counter with a whisk in his hand, perked up at the sound of his name. They had a brief conversation without exchanging a single word, her raising her eyebrows and him nodding. _She wants to talk to you,_ Abby mouthed. He nodded again.

“He can talk,” Abby said, seating herself at one of the steel barstools at the opposite edge of the counter and crossing her legs. “I’ll hand you over to him.”

“Okay,” Clarke said. “Love you. See you soon. Do you want me to get started on dinner?”

Abby hadn’t even thought about dinner, but that was her job. Clarke may have been the head of student government, but she was the head of their household.

“No, you don’t need to,” Abby insisted. “I’ll be home by five. At the latest.”

“You don’t have to rush,” Clarke said. “There’s plenty of frozen pizza in the fridge.”

“Okay. Love you,” Abby said. Her ‘okay’ was more a termination of the topic than an agreement to her statement; she was saving the argument about how unhealthy frozen pizza was for later, when she had more energy. “Here’s Marcus.”

Leaning forward, she placed the phone in his outstretched hand. He held it to his ear with his shoulder as he continued to whisk, chattering away with an easy familiarity, as if he’d known her daughter all her life instead of less than a year. She couldn’t hear her daughter’s words but recognized the sound of her laughter, smiled when she considered how her being with him had also brought her – just maybe – a friend.

Unbound by guilt over her daughter her mind started to wander, drifting back to another familial relationship she and Marcus had yet to discuss. Perhaps it was a mistake to bring it up, considering they’d only gotten back together last night. She’d be wise to drop it. To leave it for another day. Months from now, they might talk about it when everything had steadied again. And yet, a tiny, nagging part of her mind couldn’t let it go.

They needed to talk about Vera.

Abby’s Facebook snooping had turned up more than she thought possible – Vera Kane’s wall was covered in photos of her son, many of them from his teenage years. She recognized his birthday every year with a simple post, occasionally changing her profile picture to an old photo of her and him. It was clear as the water running from Marcus’ kitchen sink that his mother had forgiven him for what happened all those years ago. Now that he’d forgiven himself, too…she hoped they could reconnect.

The woman who consoled her in her car deserved her son back, and Marcus Kane needed his mother.

So she vowed to bring it up at breakfast, as they sat down across from each other at a glass table with a tree in the center with plates of pancakes in front of them. But broaching the subject, she found, was far easier considered than done.

“Are you cold?” Marcus asked. “You can have my robe.”

“No,” she said. “I’m just thinking…I don’t have any real clothes to put on after this.”

She stifled a laugh as his eyes widened, the realization hitting him, too – she didn’t have anything other than the dress she’d worn last night, the dress that was now hopelessly stretched and laying in a wrinkled, sweaty pile on his floor. His shirts were fine to sleep in, but they wouldn’t suffice during the day or on the drive home.

“That…hadn’t occurred to me,” he said, freezing with a fork in hand. “You don’t think Clarke will mind, do you? If you want, we can make a quick stop at the mall and pick something up.”

“No, we don’t have to do that,” she said. Scooting forward a little in her chair, she crossed her right leg over her left and swallowed hard. The pancakes were mouthwateringly tantalizing, and as much as she appreciated his sentiment, she was _hungry_. “It’s just...I think we probably stretched it out. Or ripped it. Maybe both. We did a better job of keeping it intact last time.”

He blushed a little – a tinge of pink creeping across his cheeks – and her smile widened. “Clarke might mind if I came home in nothing but my underwear.”

Marcus stared at her for a long moment, his expression one of careful consideration. His brown gaze was unreadable.

“You know…” he said, idly twirling the fork between his pointer and middle finger. “We wouldn’t have this problem if you moved some of your things here.”

She froze with a strawberry on the tip of her tongue.

Was he asking her to move in with him?

It was as sweet a gesture as it was impractical, and she thought he probably knew it. Her first duty was to Clarke, and she couldn’t run away every weekend to meet him in his Polis apartment, throw herself into his arms, and hold him until the sun came up. Abandoning her for the man she loved was no love at all. Not if she had to give up weekends with her daughter to do it.

Marcus noticed her silence, amended his statement.

“I’m not asking you to move from Arkadia,” he said, and Abby visibly relaxed. “And I probably won’t be able to be here every weekend until the end of the school year. But this is the second time we’ve run into this problem, and there’s a solution in front of us. You’re already taking care of the apartment while I’m gone, and-“

“Or you could move in with me,” Abby blurted, his babbling giving her the time she needed to think it over. It would be June before they knew it – in teacher time, the end of the school year was just a few seconds away – and the thought of him being an hour away again after everything they’d endured was simply too much to bear. She couldn’t relocate to Polis, not with Clarke at home. But he’d already be nomadic, moving after a half a year in another city – who was to say he couldn’t move an hour closer?

“Abby, are you…” he trailed off, his jaw slightly slack, shock written on every centimeter of his expression. “Are you sure?”

She nodded, certain she was as sure as she could ever be. She’d have to check with Clarke, of course – Marcus would understand that – but there was no reason for her daughter to say no. If the conversation upon which she’d just eavesdropped was any indication, they’d get along perfectly over the summer months. And, hopefully, longer than that if the principal job went to him.

“I know it’s a big step,” Abby said, feeling as though her heart was about to leap out of her chest. “But I think we’ll be ready by June. Clarke likes you. And-“ she paused, gave him a smile she hoped looked confident and not terrified – “I need someone to make pasta sauce in the Griffin house.”

He leaned forward a little, pushing his plate a few inches in her direction. “What would we do with this place?”

“Keep it,” Abby said, her instant response more reflexive than logical. Whatever he was paying for rent, it had to be twice the amount in her savings. But a piece of her heart had settled on the couch here, stared out the floor-to-ceiling window at the bustling city, and while giving it up wasn’t her choice she felt her chest ache when she thought of someone else owning it. She hadn’t been here long, but it already felt like home.

“We could always come here on weekends,” she elaborated. “Clarke works as a camp counselor for a few weeks in July, so we could live here then.”

Marcus was quiet, staring at her, and Abby wondered if he could hear the sound of her heart racing from across the table. God knew it was loud enough in her throat.

“You’re _sure_ you’re okay with this,” he said softly. It was a question pronounced as a statement, careful and hesitant. And his tone conveyed the second meaning of his sentence, something she’d thought about before speaking that fateful sentence. But Marcus didn’t know she’d considered it. And he needed that pillar of stability.

Abby could hardly blame him. It was one thing to be ready to live with someone – to start a life with them, as it were – and another to invite them into your late husband’s bed, to let them use the utensils in the kitchen that his hands had touched, to see them watching the TV in the same spot on the leather couch that held creases from years of him sitting there. Marcus wasn’t just asking her if she was certain she wanted him to live with her: he was asking if she was sure she wanted him _there_ , in Arkadia, living in the home where she’d lived with Jake.

She did.

If there was one thing she knew about her husband, aside from the fact that she’d always love him, she knew he’d want her to be happy. That he’d want her and Clarke to keep going and living in his absence, and love was a part of life. Unexpected, uninvited, but cherished all the same, Jake would have wanted her to make room for that love under the roof they’d once shared.

“Living an hour away and seeing you once every week…it’s not enough,” she said, swallowing hard and wiping her sweaty palms against his cotton shirt. “We could make it work, but if there’s another way-“

“There is,” he said, insistent, his small smile informing her this was a lesson she’d taught him. “There’s always another way, Abby. I’m not bonded to this place, or these things. I just need to know you’ve thought about this. That you won’t wake up one day filled with regret.”

“I won’t,” she said. She’d been thinking about it for longer than this conversation. She’d been thinking about it every time her fingers touched a jar of pasta sauce, she’d been thinking about it every time she looked across the hall and didn’t see him. She’d been thinking about it as she fell asleep alone and woke up to a cold bed in the morning. At that point, she wouldn’t have dared to talk about it – things were still too new, and it would have been moving too fast – but now, after last night, she felt she could.

“We went from one hour away to six,” she said, wishing the table was a little shorter so she could reach across and hold his hand. As it was, she could only hold a bowl of fresh fruit. “If there’s a chance we can minimize that to a minute, a couple seconds…I’m ready, Marcus.”

“So am I,” he agreed.

They stared at each other for a few seconds longer, smiling without a care as the gray clouds began shattering in the sky and allowing sunlight to stream through. With the sun’s rays streaming through the window and soaking into him, he glowed with an almost luminescent bashfulness. As if he couldn’t quite believe the discussion they’d just had, as if he still thought they might be living in a dream.

“I think the pancakes have gotten cold,” he said, shattering the moment with pink-tinged cheeks, his eyes the color of melted chocolate. “A minute in the microwave ought to fix that.”

He stood and reached for her plate, taking his own in his left hand and hers in his right. There was little doubt in her mind that he was right: no tendrils of steam rose from her plate, the twin pair of pancakes having cooled to the air around them.

“I can help,” Abby volunteered, and Marcus gave her a kind look accompanied by a bemused smile.

“It’s just the microwave,” he said. “I don’t need help pressing the buttons, Abby. But thank you.”

It was then she realized the other topic of conversation she’d neglected, the one she’d gone into breakfast hoping to have. Vera Kane scratched at the back of her memory like fingernails on a chalkboard. Abby’s memories of her felt urgent, pressing, a secret she needed to share. But after the discussion they’d just had – the weight they’d successfully lifted – she didn’t think adding more would be a wise choice. Best, now, to wait for the right time.

So she stood to join him by the microwave, hearing the low whirr of the power starting and a similar whirr of plans falling into place. As she wrapped her arms around him from behind, sighed softly as his hands slipped over hers, the gears turned. She had Vera’s location from Facebook, and her full name. A simple internet search would turn up her phone number, and then…

But would she entertain a phone call from the woman in love with her son? Would this be too large of a boundary to cross, even for them? She didn’t want to invade Marcus’ privacy, but her knowledge of Vera Kane felt like a vise around her heart. If he knew how she and Vera were connected, he could hardly get angry with her. Somewhere, in her heart, she knew he wouldn’t.

And over breakfast, between bites of pancakes and fresh pineapple, she asked another question that had been grating on her. As it turned out, it was a question that fed her musings like gasoline to a fire. A question that served as a green light.

“Why do you have a tree in the middle of your table?”

His mouth full of half-chewed pancake, Marcus could do nothing for a few seconds but give her a shy smile. The look in his eyes had turned distant, and Abby wondered – at least then – if that had been the wrong thing to ask.

“It was my mother’s favorite kind,” he said, warmly solemn. “She had a Bonsai when I was growing up. She called it ‘The Eden Tree.’”

Abby had to fight to keep her jaw from dropping. While she didn’t consider herself a religious woman, sometimes she had to wonder about the existence of a higher power. At how perfectly things had fallen into place today – if something larger could be manipulating the pieces.

“We haven’t really talked about our families,” Abby noted, realizing there was a glaring hole that would probably need to be filled before they moved in together. Not that she was afraid of anything that would come from Marcus’ lips – quite the opposite, in fact, she welcomed the chance to learn anything and everything she could about him.

“There’s not much to talk about,” he said, his voice a tender combination of wistful and strained. “My father wasn’t a good man. He died when I was young, and we were better off for it. My mother raised me.”

“Any siblings?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Just me.”

“I was an only child, too,” Abby said, an electric thrill running through her at the realization they had something else in common. “My parents decided one was enough. The closest thing I had to a brother was my younger cousin, Jackson.”

“Do you see your parents often?” Marcus asked, burying his gaze in a bowl of fruit.

“No,” Abby said, deflecting her eyes to her half-eaten pancake. She’d never been close with them, but the memories of their passing still stung. It was like being stung by a bee, those mental images of dark colors and muted sobs. While she knew the pain would fade, that didn’t make it hurt any less in the moment.

She’d admit, although not without reluctance, that her relationship with her parents was part of the reason she tried so hard to be as involved as she could with Clarke. Not to smother her, but to give her the love Abby had never felt certain she had. “They passed away ten years ago.”

Marcus looked at her then, shoulders slumping. “I’m so sorry, Abby. I didn’t mean to-“

“You didn’t do anything,” she said, jumping to reassure him. “It’s been a while since I’ve talked about it, but we weren’t close. I still talk to Jackson from time to time, though. He works at a hospital a few hours away.”

A deep breath helped, and she found the room ceasing to spin around her. Looking at him, it was obvious from the regret in his gaze and the stiffness of his posture that he hadn’t had that strained relationship with Vera. Even without his reaction, that much would have been clear: he had her favorite tree in the middle of his dining room table. Clearly, Marcus Kane still loved his mother.

So what was holding him back?

“Well, I’d enjoy meeting him if he’s ever in town,” Marcus said.

“I’m sure he’d love to meet you,” Abby said, smiling at happier mental images of them meeting. While Jackson would probably be intimidated by Marcus at first – and really, who wasn’t? – she was certain he’d grow to enjoy his company.

“Have you talked to your mother? Since everything that happened?” Abby asked, desperate for an answer. She hadn’t thought it would be a good idea to spring the question on him, but now it felt organic. A natural extension of their conversation. Marcus, finished with his breakfast, stood and brought his dish to the sink. When he answered, he was facing away from her.

“No,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to, but I haven’t found the right time.”

 _The right time,_ she wondered, _or the right words?_

There were so many things she could have said then, things that might have gone a long way in patching the emptiness in his heart where Vera Kane should have lived. Those memories of the night after Jake’s funeral had moved to the tip of her tongue, aching to burst forth into the open air. If Marcus knew she and Vera were connected, perhaps it would be easier to make that phone call. To find the words. To talk.

But he looked at her then, raw and full of broken pieces, and she thought now might not be the time to have that discussion. At least, not with him. She’d gotten half an answer today, and that would be good enough to put her plan into motion.

So instead, she said, “You will.”

He nodded, swallowed hard, and went back to scrubbing his plate.

And later that night – after they’d kissed goodbye and he’d begun his long drive back to Trikru, after she made salads for her and Clarke and did the dishes by herself, after Clarke went upstairs to work on her homework and she did a fair amount of searching – Abby Griffin found what she was looking for.

She took a deep breath, looked at the circular glowing numbers on her cell phone screen, and dialed before she could think herself out of it.

The phone rang once, twice, three times. She wouldn’t leave a message. If Vera didn’t answer now, maybe it wasn’t meant to be.

“Hello?”

Abby’s stomach dropped and soared all at once, somersaulting as though she’d gotten stuck upside down on a roller coaster. This was the voice of the woman who she’d been convinced was some sort of angel, a woman who had consoled her when she needed it most. Her tongue felt like lead behind her lips, her fingers beginning to tremble.

“Hi,” she said, doing everything in her power to keep her voice steady. “Am I speaking to Vera Kane?”

“Yes,” the kindly woman answered, everything in that single syllable matching Abby’s fondest memories of the worst day of her life. “May I ask who’s calling?”

“My name is Abby Griffin,” she breathed. Abby hadn’t counted on fighting a battle on two fronts – her memories and her love for Marcus – and right now, she was being attacked on both. “I don’t know if you remember me, but we talked a few years ago. You found me in the parking lot of a grocery store that went out of business, and-“

“ _Abby_!” Vera exclaimed, and just like that – with one simple word – all of Abby’s nerves flew out the door. “How are you, dear? Are you feeling better? I hope the new year has been kind to you.”

“I’m doing well.” _And I’m in love with your son._ “A lot of things have changed since we talked. My life…” she stopped for a moment, swallowed the emotions that had begun making her lower lip tremble, “has gotten so much better. Just like you said it would.”

“That’s good to hear,” Vera said, sounding genuinely relieved. “I always knew you’d heal. The Lord works in mysterious and wonderful ways.”

_Like putting your son across the hall from me at work, like throwing us into each other’s arms and telling us to stay there._

“That’s actually not the reason I called,” Abby said, cringing at herself for not thinking of a better transition. But the only thing coming to mind – vastly unhelpful – was an ongoing chorus of ‘ _I’m in love with your son, and I think you should call him._ ’ Which was as delicate as a needle in the arm, and potentially twice as painful if she struck a nerve.

“Oh,” Vera said. “What is it, dear?”

It was now or never. Her discussion with Marcus about family, the pain of losing him and losing Jake and losing her parents was all coming to a head now, and she could taste the bitterness of half-digested salad in the back of her throat. As good as it felt to hear Vera’s voice, the reprieve in her nerves might have only been temporary.

So, in a move for which she’d chide herself a thousand times over as she lay awake in bed that night, she said the only thing her brain had given her to say.

“I’m in love with your son, and I think you should call him.”


	27. Of Dinners and Decisions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last full-length chapter, everyone! But please don't get too upset with me - there'll be an epilogue. (And there's a definite possibility the epilogue could end up being at least 3,000 words, because I'm long winded and really emotional about this fic ending). As always, I love you all and I hope you enjoy!

Marcus, standing by the stove, didn’t hear the doorbell when it rang. He was too absorbed in the scent of basil and garlic, the tomato-scented simmering of the sauce in the pan as he stirred. The fan was loud and his thoughts were louder. The doorbell, it seemed, had no chance.

“I’ll get it,” Abby volunteered, snapping him back to reality as her lips brushed softly against his cheek. There was no one around yet to see their public display of affection: Clarke had gone upstairs an hour ago under the guise of finishing her homework and had yet to return.

There was only one person who could be at the door, one who would arrive at 6:30 for a 7:00 dinner party. And above all, Marcus knew he should be the one to answer it.

“No, that’s all right,” he volunteered, stopping her with a few words before she was too far away to hear him. “I should be the one to invite her in.”

Abby nodded slowly, her ponytail swinging behind her as her chin moved up and down. The rapidly-warming late springtime sun had peppered her hair with streaks of blonde, and in the yellowish light of the kitchen it appeared almost golden. Everything – from her tight-fitting jeans to her favorite henley (she’d insisted on wearing it, even though it was supposed to be 70 degrees and Marcus had warned her she’d melt) – was perfect.

He could see a tinge of nervousness in her eyes, flickering in time with the tiny flame burning beneath the saucepan. She had no reason for her anxiety, and on some level, he thought she might understand that. But as she’d reminded him that morning in bed, his arms pulling her close enough to make them a single entity, meeting his mother on a snowy night a year ago was one thing. Meeting his mother after being with him for six months was…well, another.

The dinner had been her idea, to celebrate the start of his last week at Trikru and the interview he had at Arkadia the day after. Smiling across the miles, he’d considered that weekend would also mark the first few days in which all of his possessions – or at least, the ones he most cared about – found a new home inside of hers.

There hadn’t been a designated moving day, so to speak. Rather, he carried a few things with him every time he came home from Trikru, staying at her home into the early hours of the morning. The first weekend, he brought a few shirts. The second, a couple pairs of pants and the rest of his clothes. The third, a few of his favorite books. And this weekend, the fourth, the tree on the middle of his dining room table.

After that, there was little more he cared about. What more did he need, when his world was standing three feet away from him?

Glancing over at Abby’s table, set carefully with folded napkins and polished silverware, Marcus smiled at the sight of his little tree occupying the same space in her home as it did in his. They could both grow roots here, he thought.

Abby made her way toward him again, leaning her leg against the scuffed wooden cabinets as she regarded him with something akin to admiring exasperation.

“You’re watching the sauce,” she said matter-of-factly, as though he were the only man in the world capable of such an important task. “I can get the door, Marcus.” The corners of her mouth lifted into a small smile as she inhaled deeply, relished the scent of their creation. “It smells wonderful. And it wasn’t too complicated.”

Marcus thought it might have been meant as a compliment, considering that he’d been the one teaching her his old family recipe. But given that she’d helped in the preparation just as much as he did, he couldn’t with good conscience take all the credit.

“The trickiest thing about it is remembering to stir it,” he said. “One time I had it prepared and set it on the stove, only to find half of it cemented to my pan two hours later.”

She laughed, and he thought it just might have been his favorite sound.

“I didn’t know Chef Kane made such silly mistakes,” she said jokingly, turning so her back was flat against the cabinets. “I thought he was above all that.”

“Chef Kane,” he said, raising his eyebrows and tone to meet her humor, “has made his fair share of mistakes in the kitchen.”

“I’m shocked,” she said, moving closer, dazzlingly-white smile widening. Her eyes, almost black in the autumn-like glow of the room, churned with teasing, with a childlike glee. For a second, her smirk stole his breath: just a few weeks earlier, he’d been convinced a moment like this was meant only for his dreams.

He’d thought that cooking pasta sauce with Abby Griffin lay solidly in a lifetime that rested just outside his grasp, that had slipped through his fingers like grains of sand. Little had he known how close they still were. How close they’d been that whole damn month, if they’d only been able to work up the courage to close the distance.

At times like this, when he found himself reminiscing on that hellacious hole her absence had opened in him, he was thankful for the kids’ interference. Without them, there was a very real chance they wouldn’t have found each other again. Or at least, he thought with a whisper of a smile, not in such a timely manner. As much as they loved each other, neither of them excelled at saying what they felt: it was for that reason they’d gotten together after five months of tension-laden hatred carefully unmasked as something deeper.

Abby had been absolutely right when she assumed prom-night surprises weren’t his style, and without Octavia he wouldn’t have known she was chaperoning. Tonight, then, would be a good opportunity for him to express his gratitude to her and her brother. Abby had discreetly invited them one day after class, told Octavia it was a thank-you for helping them realize how they’d been feeling. Naturally, Octavia had refused to go if Jasper and Monty weren’t invited, and Monty refused to attend if Miller couldn’t attend, and John Murphy had somehow wormed his way into the mess. At the end, their dinner party ended up with a headcount of a dozen instead of the quaint, quiet evening with his mother and Clarke as which it had been intended.

For her part, Abby wasn’t finished with her ribbing about his culinary prowess. “I thought you, of all people, would’ve-“

_Ding-dong!_

They froze, staring at each other as they remembered other people would soon be invading their bubble of soft, easy intimacy. The world kept spinning even when it seemed to shrink to hold only them, and his mother was still at the door with a casserole in her hands that Marcus had expressly told her not to worry about baking. And thus reality was reinstated, the teasing gone for the time being.

“Really. I can get it,” Abby insisted, but he shook his head.

“I should be the one,” he said. “This should be good for another few minutes. But next time, I want you to do it. I know you’re perfectly capable of stirring pasta sauce, Abby.”

She smirked. “I am. But right now, I’m more worried about an accident that forces all our kids – and your mom – to eat plain noodles.”

“Or,” he said, doing his best to convince her as he carefully placed the wooden spoon on the spoon rest, “we’d order three pizzas and call it a night.”

“ _Three_?” she said as her pink lips parted and her eyes widened. “You have a lot to learn about teenagers, Kane. Three’s only enough for two of them. Didn’t you have pizza parties at the end of the year?”

His face reddened. “Pizza parties weren’t my style.”

“Imagine,” Abby drawled with a smirk that only deepened his flush, trading places with her to stand by the sauce. “Mr. Kane having a pizza party. I should have known better.”

The hallway beckoned, and Marcus abandoned their banter for their guest. It wasn’t a far walk to the front door – no less than fifty feet – but it felt as though he’d sprinted the length of a football field. Two weeks wasn’t enough time to vanquish all the guilt and self-loathing that had resurfaced as a result of Vera Kane’s phone call. Hearing her voice had been enough to click the few missing pieces of his heart back into place, but knowing the push had come from Abby made it almost bittersweet. It should have been him instead of her.

Now, in 20/20 hindsight, he wondered why he hadn’t bothered to call his mother sooner. What had he been so afraid of? The events at The Ark had happened three years ago. Had he thought that if he called her after that, after she found out what he did, that she’d refuse to speak to him? Or worse, was he afraid she’d try to save him? That she’d assure him of some otherworldly redemption he was convinced he’d never deserve?

He pulled open the front door, felt the familiar warmth spreading through his chest as he took in his mother’s smiling face and aura of excitement. Just for tonight, he thought, perhaps he could put those feelings aside. With a little help from her and Abby, perhaps he could live in the present instead of the past. After all, quite a bit had changed since then.

“Marcus,” Vera said, beaming, a tinfoil-covered dish in her hands. It wasn’t the first time they’d seen each other since the call – she’d visited him at his apartment only a week earlier, and they’d spoken almost every night since then. It was a relief to have her back in his life, patching a hole in his soul he hadn’t known had formed.

“Hello, mom,” he said, inviting her in out of the mild April night. As soon as she stepped inside and set down the casserole, he pulled her in for a hug. It was something like a miracle, he thought, to be close to his mother again. It had been a long time since that had been a possibility, but the bond they shared was well on its way to reaching full strength again.

“How are you, dear?” she asked. The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled, and although it had only been a week since he’d seen her last he was overwhelmed by the urge to tell her everything. To tell her about the drive from Trikru to Arkadia, to tell her about his increasing nerves about the upcoming interview with his old school district, to tell her all about how he and Abby met and how deeply he loved her.

Those were the kinds of things he’d always felt comfortable sharing with her; the woman who raised him by herself, eternally keeping her faith in people and in God. To this day, he had no idea how she did it. Vera Kane undoubtedly joined the ranks of people who would always be better than him, deserving of the world, unaware of their profound positive impact. Along with Abby, of course.

But that conversation would have to wait for another time, a time when twelve teenagers wouldn’t be barreling down on their tiny house in less than a half-hour.

“Great,” he said, eyeing the casserole suspiciously, picking it up as she removed her jacket. “Didn’t we tell you not to bring this?”

“Now, Marcus. Is that any way to accept a gift?” Vera answered his question with one of her own, making him feel as though he were an 8-year-old caught with his hands in the cookie jar. Three years, it seemed, wasn’t long enough to break the hold she had over his conscience.

“Abby and I didn’t want you to bring anything,” he retorted weakly. This was an argument he knew he’d lose, but there was some honor to be found in fighting the battle. “You’re our guest.”

“Along with hungry teenagers,” Vera said, raising her eyebrows and giving him the look he remembered all too well from his childhood, the look that raised red-hot coils of shame in his chest. “The two of you will be lucky if you get to eat anything.”

She chuckled, making it apparent she was joking.

“Now, where’s Abby?” she asked. Casserole in hand, Marcus led her into the kitchen and found Abby stirring the sauce. He felt a rush of pride, although he’d very well known she could.

“Abby!” Vera exclaimed, making her way toward the stovetop to give her a brief, but tight, hug. “Everything smells _wonderful_. I’m sure the kids will love it.”

Abby’s gaze drifted to Marcus for a moment, then down to the dish in his hands. Keeping up the façade of joy for Vera, she frowned and mouthed, “ _We told her not to do that!”_

Marcus rolled his eyes with a smile, set the casserole down on the counter along with the rolls they’d baked earlier in the day. _The irony,_ he thought. Marcus could think of another woman besides Vera who seemed intent on disobeying every direct command given to her.

“Is this the family recipe?” Vera asked, hovering over the simmering sauce and breathing in deeply.

“Yes,” Marcus answered. He stepped closer to the pair, standing next to Abby. He could practically feel the gears turning in her head as she tried to come up with a way to bring up the casserole: she didn’t want to be disrespectful, but she’d want to make it known that Vera hadn’t needed to bring a thing besides herself. “I thought since it was a special occasion…”

“Abby, you know how to make it?” Vera assumed, and Abby gave a few quick nods.

“He taught me,” she said. “I had been using sauces from a jar before today.”

“That simply won’t do,” Vera retorted. “Although…”

She looked from Marcus to Abby, a twinkle in her eye that he knew meant mischief was coming. And Marcus looked at the woman standing next to him, breathtaking in her shirt and jeans, and begged her silently to interject. _Anytime you want to bring up that casserole, Abby…_

“If you’re making the pasta sauce, you’re part of our family,” Vera said. “You’re a Kane.”

Without thinking, Marcus reached over and wrapped his arm around Abby’s waist. She leaned into him without hesitation, her face bright-red from embarrassment. Though she was the lone component of the pairing who displayed her emotions visibly, she wasn’t the only one feeling them.

 _Mom,_ Marcus groaned inwardly, realizing he sounded much like a teenager himself. _Don’t embarrass me in front of her._

If this was a hint at marriage – which he thought it might be – that was a topic he’d discuss with them later, individually. Admittedly, he and Abby were determined to take things slow after what happened last month. Moving in together was a big step, but they were resolved to take things in steps instead of jumps, instead of leaps. The last thing either of them wanted was to go too far, and marriage would have been an Olympic-sized long jump.

Vera, on the other hand, would push him toward getting a ring. Especially if he sat down with her and discussed their relationship; how there didn’t seem to be a fight he and Abby couldn’t eventually resolve, how being with her felt as natural as breathing, how he thought she was, and always would be, the most important thing in his life. If his mother knew anything of that sort, she’d likely buy a ring and give it to Abby herself, saying she was doing what Marcus was too shy to do.

So, getting overly emotional about Abby in front of his mother wasn’t an option. At least not now, not after this well-placed little quip about her “becoming a Kane.”

“Thank you, Vera,” was all Abby said, excusing herself to start boiling the noodles. Marcus filled a pan with water, setting it on the stove and turning the dial to high. Vera asked if she could help, and Abby insisted she could be best of assistance by sitting down at the kitchen table and relaxing.

“She wasn’t supposed to bring a casserole,” Abby whispered to him after his mom had taken her seat at the kitchen table.

“I know,” Marcus agreed. “But she won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. She made a good point.”

“Which was?” Abby said, checking the water to discern whether or not it was boiling. It wasn’t.

“We have a horde of kids coming over tonight. It might take more than bowls of pasta and rolls to fill them up,” he said.

“Now you’re getting it,” she said playfully, walking back to the sink to wash a few dishes. “I wish she hadn’t brought it, though. She didn’t have to make anything for us.”

She looked at him a little longer than was necessary for a conversation about an unexpected casserole, and Marcus wondered if this was really about the dish sitting on the counter. If it wasn’t in reference to the rest of their chat, Vera’s reference to her being a Kane. That, he thought as his stomach somersaulted, was a discussion they’d save for later. After their guests went home, and Clarke went to sleep.

_Ding-dong!_

The pair looked at each other expectantly, both wondering who could be arriving next. Seven o’clock had barely come and gone, and to be honest, Marcus hadn’t expected any of the kids to show before seven thirty.

“Do you want me to get it?” Marcus asked, but Abby shook her head.

“You got it last time,” she said, already halfway to the door. “We’ll go in shifts.”

Inwardly, Marcus cringed. Although he’d approved of inviting them all, there were some kids whom he looked forward to seeing again more than others. John Murphy, for example, didn’t rank too highly on the list. He had a good heart somewhere, buried underneath layer upon layer of sarcasm, or he wouldn’t have helped he and Abby find each other again. But he didn’t expect that warmhearted selflessness to be on display tonight – at least, not from _all_ their guests.

“Monty, Jasper, and Nate,” he heard Abby exclaim, a roundabout way of alerting him as to who had come in. Mentally, Marcus sifted through the names of kids yet to arrive, ranking them in terms of who he most wanted to see when he opened the door. _Bellamy. Octavia. John Murphy._

Abby invited them inside and made small talk with them as they removed their jackets and shoes.

“Smells good in here, Mrs. G,” he heard Jasper say, flattery dripping from his words. “I haven’t eaten all day, so…”

“You had McDonald’s twenty minutes ago,” Monty interjected, and Marcus gave a tiny laugh. “Nice try, though. Raising your grade is going to take more than that.”

“Hey, I played an integral role in getting them back together,” Jasper retorted, talking as though Abby weren’t standing in the same room as them. “I think that’s worth a letter grade.”

“It isn’t,” Abby said matter-of-factly as they entered the kitchen. Marcus grinned. There was a side of her only he was able to glimpse; the woman who kissed him awake in the morning and fell asleep in his arms at night, the woman who graded papers until one in the morning and had to be dragged upstairs into her own bed after passing out on the couch with a pen in her hand. But he loved this Abby just as fervently – the Abby he shared with her students – the woman who loved her job almost as much as the students she taught.

“Hey, Kane,” Nate said. Marcus gave a quick wave as he poured the pasta into the pan of boiling water, set the timer for ten minutes.

“Hello, Nathan,” Marcus said. “Are you ready for exams?”

His former student groaned, and that was all the answer Marcus needed.

“Seriously,” Nate said. “If you ever wanna have that study session, I’d really appreciate it.”

“I think that could be arranged,” Marcus said, stirring the noodles carefully as steam brought beads of sweat trickling down his forehead. “We would need to find a time that works for as many people as possible.”

“We could figure it out,” Monty volunteered, and Marcus remembered he was in another period of the course with a different instructor. “Maybe we could use the school cafeteria. Clarke could-“

“I could what?” Clarke asked, seemingly having materialized out of thin air. Her three companions smiled, and they shared brief hugs upon seeing each other.

As a teacher, bonds between students were either blindingly apparent or impossible to discern. For example, the antagonistic relationship between she and Bellamy had been as apparent as a sunrise, but Marcus wouldn’t have guessed Clarke Griffin was close with Jasper Jordan. The pair had little in common, and he wouldn’t have put it past her to share an embrace with him just to be polite.

Nate Miller, on the other hand, shared many of the same character traits as Abby’s daughter: they were both studious, naturally gifted learners, and asked questions whenever they felt they didn’t understand the material. The hug between the two of them, he thought, made perfect sense.

“You could get us the cafeteria for a study session,” Miller finished after greetings had been shared. “We’re all pretty screwed for the exam, unless you can-“

“I’m not,” Clarke interjected, “because I’ve been studying.”

“Well you don’t have to come, then,” Monty said, giving her a reproachful glare. “But some of us need a little more help. And as Student Council president, I think you should listen to your people.”

Jasper, bored, had begun wandering aimlessly around the house. Abby kept an eye on him as the discussion about AP Government continued, drawing Marcus in at the next turn.

“Are you going to lead it?” Clarke asked, looking straight at Marcus with no shortage of hope in her gaze. And if he’d thought it was impossible to say no to Abby, it was unthinkable to refuse her daughter. _Not even moved into the house yet,_ he thought, _and you’re already wrapped around her little finger._

“I don’t see why not,” Marcus said, and Miller and Monty exchanged joyful high-fives with a loud cheer. “If you can figure out a date and time, just tell me where I need to be and when.”

Clarke’s seawater eyes sparkled. “Okay,” she said. “I can do that.”

Abby led the kids into the dining room and introduced them to Vera. She’d been warned ahead of time about the large group of teenagers who would be invading their quiet home for the evening, and he and Abby had even asked if she’d rather come for dinner a different night. Chaos, they’d warned her, was only one taunt away with these kids – _their_ kids, a group of misfit teens they knew all too well. But Vera had simply laughed and said, “the more, the merrier.” And that, Marcus guessed, was when the casserole idea had been conceived.

If the sounds wafting toward him from his lonely post by the noodles was any indication, Vera and Miller had hit it off nicely. They were deep in discussion about a book they’d both read recently – a mystery Marcus had never heard of – but it was nice to hear his mother bonding with his former students. Both relics of his past life he now cherished, things he hoped to be able to bring to the forefront again.

_Ding-dong!_

Abby came back from the living room just in time, gesturing for him to hand over the stirring spoon.

“Your turn,” she said. “I handled the last group.”

“You did a good job,” Marcus said, placing the silver handle in her outstretched palm. “They respect you and they like you. That’s a rare balance.”

She smiled a smile warmer than the steam rising from the stove.

“I’m not the only one who has a fan club,” she said.

Marcus shrugged. “Not exactly,” he said as he headed for the entryway. “But thank you.”

He pulled open the door to reveal a smiling Bellamy and a straight-faced Octavia, both of whom stood ramrod-straight with their hands cemented in their pockets.

“Come in,” he said, stepping aside to allow their visitors to pass. “How are you?”

“We’re great,” Bellamy said. “I’ve been reading the book you gave me.”

“The Iliad?” Marcus said, seeking confirmation in his former student’s gaze. Bellamy nodded.

“I like it,” he said, his tone conveying his gratitude. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Marcus said.

“And I’m just here for the food,” Octavia grumbled, tossing her tall black boots in a heap by the storage closet and discarding her leather jacket on the landing of the stairs. Marcus’ smile widened: it was a relief, in a way, to know some things hadn’t changed. Octavia Blake’s surliness masked a genuine depth of feeling, and for that, he was honored.

“It’s good to see you too, Octavia,” he said. She shrugged, but gave him a brief smile. The pattering of feet told him the rest of the kids were close, and he stepped back to give them some space.

“Hey, Octavia!” Jasper shouted, and although he was more in the kitchen than the entryway, Marcus could hear every syllable of their conversation.

“Hey,” he heard Octavia say, a smile evident in her voice. “Did you guys get McDonald’s before this? Sorry I couldn’t meet you.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Jasper said. “We can go after if you still want ice cream.”

Marcus knew he was no longer their teacher – and in fact, he’d never been Octavia or Jasper’s – but it was all he could do to hold back his best withering glare. _Abby made a wonderful meal for you,_ he nearly said. _The least you can do is keep the conversation about fast food to a minimum. At least until you’ve left the house._

“Did you already try it?” she asked, hinting at an earlier conversation.

“Yeah. Didn’t work. My grade is still a C.”

“Fuck.”

Monty, Bellamy, Clarke and Nate appeared to be having their own conversation, still revolving around the review session that had yet to be planned.

“Don’t you think it’s a good idea?” Monty said, talking a mile a minute. “A lot of us aren’t really prepared, and Kane could probably help us, and-“

“I’ve been studying,” Bellamy said, and Clarke’s laugh brought a smile to both he and Abby’s lips. They weren’t the only pair in the house to make the jump from enemies to friends, even if in Clarke’s case it hadn’t turned to anything more. “I don’t know what you guys have been doing, but I don’t want to take Government in college.”

“Come on, Bellamy,” Monty pleaded.

The look interchanged between he and Clarke was almost a palpable thing, evident in the silence that followed.

“What do you think?” he asked, his words directed at Clarke.

“I think it wouldn’t hurt,” she said. “They need some hope, after all.”

Marcus introduced his mother to the rest of the kids, relieved they at least tolerated her. There was something about Vera, he thought, that made it extremely difficult to dislike her. Even during their years of radio silence, he had never despised her, never regarded her with any measure of bitterness. She was too kind, too sweet, too altruistic for him to hold anything in his heart but a void with her name on it.

They shared a knowing smile, Vera pretending to leaf through a magazine on Abby’s coffee table while undoubtedly eavesdropping on the kids. Octavia and Jasper continued their conversation about their grades in Anatomy. Bellamy, Clarke, Monty and Nate were knee-deep in plans for an AP Government review. The house was abuzz with chatter from all sides, and although he’d lived the majority of his adult life in an empty apartment Marcus admitted to himself that he found it comforting. There was something about this group of people that made him feel safe, wanted, and home all at once.

Confident that any sort of bombastic crisis would have reared its ugly head by now, Marcus retreated to the kitchen to help Abby with the last of the dinner preparations.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, not bothering to turn around as she dumped pasta into a strainer.

“We’ve avoided any crises,” he said, turning down the burner on the pasta sauce to low. “For now, there’s peace.”

She hummed in contentment as she tilted the bowl toward the still-warm pot, the pasta following the angle. “That’s something we haven’t had in a while.”

The more he thought about it, the more accurate her assertion became. Aside from the last few weeks, their courtship had been something of a whirlwind. They’d always been operating in the shadows, cowering in fear of ten seconds of video footage that had the power to rip them apart. A bond was forged then of mutual admiration, attraction, and eventually love. But it had been far from peaceful.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. For now, the kids (and his mother) were occupied. There was no rush to begin dinner. This was a moment carved out of the night just for them, a few heartbeats they could spend in only each other’s company.

“I’m happy you’re here,” she said. Her eyes – the rich brown of dark chocolate – held a swirl of emotions he couldn’t name, but he knew she wasn’t just referring to the party. “Here” was a blanket term, covering a myriad of definitions; here in her house, here living with her and Clarke, here in Arkadia instead of Trikru, here in her arms, in this relationship.

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be,” he said, entwining his fingers with hers and guiding her forward until they stood away from the red-hot stovetop. And “nowhere” was a blanket term, too; it was the stark shadows and cold furniture of his empty apartment, the lonely drive back to Trikru that waited for him tomorrow, the rumbling ache of another week spent without her.

Giving a quick glance around the area to be certain they had no onlookers, he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. It was a kiss bathed in the burning of the lights overhead, awash in the gentle roar of the fan that tried – and failed – to keep the room cool. It was a kiss that forgot there were seven teenagers in the house, shrank the world down to fit them as Abby pulled him close, parted her lips. It was a kiss that spoke volumes without saying a single word, a kiss hungry and sated, adopted by a casual intimacy they’d already mastered: kissing in the kitchen.

“Hey Mrs. Griffin, where’s the-“

They sprang apart in unison, the sound of Octavia’s voice shoving them to opposite ends of the room like polarized ends of a magnet.

“Bathroom,” she finished with a self-satisfied smirk, then yelled, “Hey, Jasper! Pay up! They _were_ making out.”

“Gross,” Marcus heard him groan. “I’m going to McDonald’s later. Just so everyone knows.”

Barely blushing, Abby sent him an apologetic glance before announcing,

“Dinner’s ready.”

 

***

 

“So, Kane. Truth or dare.”

John Murphy had arrived ten minutes after dinner started, offered no explanation for his tardiness, said he didn’t want food, and currently sat on top of Abby’s kitchen counter while monitoring his buzzing phone. He’d been dishing out dares to anyone who would challenge him, making his way around the room before falling on Marcus.

From across the table, Abby raised her eyebrows. She hadn’t yet been forced to answer that impossible question – although from the get-go, she’d insisted that John keep things suitable for a dinner with two of his teachers – so dares had been kept to repetitions of absurd phrases (“Clarke, I dare you to tell Bellamy you need him.” “ _Need_ him? As what?” “I don’t care. I think it’ll be hilarious.”) and truths residing in a moral gray area (“Octavia, what’s the worst prank you’ve pulled at school?” “I’m not fucking telling you.” “Never mind, I think I already know. If you try to punch me, I know I’m right.”)

All the eyes in the room fell on him. Including Vera, for God’s sake. Whatever was running through John Murphy’s devious mind couldn’t be too inappropriate with his over sixty-year-old mother here, could it? A faint chill ran down his spine: he knew the answer to that question.

“Truth,” he said quietly, figuring there was nothing to do now but shove the last few noodles into his mouth and wait for whatever destiny arrived.

“How many times have you and Griffin done it?”

A choking sound echoed around the room, and Marcus was coughing up a noodle before he realized it came from _him_.

_For God’s sake, John._

“I’m not answering that,” he said through shuddering breaths, noticing how red Abby’s face had gone. His urge to apologize to her was only eclipsed by his own soul-crushing embarrassment.

“That’s the rules of the game, Kane,” Murphy drawled as he checked his phone, doing his best to seem uninterested. “You pick one, then you say something stupid.”

“I’ll change my answer then,” Marcus said. “Dare.”

“You can’t change once you pick,” Jasper chimed in from the other side of the room. “Your answer is your answer.”

_Dammit._

Marcus remained quiet for a few seconds more, trying to read the atmosphere of the room. Clarke and Bellamy looked horrified, Nate appeared moments away from being sick, Jasper was grinning from ear-to-ear, and Monty wouldn’t meet his gaze. Vera, for her part, wore the tiniest of smiles: a blink-and-gone quirk of her lips that said she’d guessed a number long before John’s question.

“Holy shit,” Jasper said, looking from Marcus to Abby to Murphy. “You broke them.”

“Murphy, you shouldn’t have asked him such a personal question,” Clarke said, glaring. “How do you expect him to-“

“I’m just having fun, Clarke.”

Then everyone started talking at once, save for he and Abby.

“This isn’t fun! Look at them!”

“I don’t know…I mean, it’s not like we haven’t been wondering…”

“It’s none of our business.”

“Then convince him to take back that question!”

“You’re on your own, Princess.”

“My guess is fifteen. I bet they’ve done it fifteen times.”

“Holy fuck. When would they have time?”

“They could _make_ time, moron. They’re old. They’re not dead.”

“It’s not fifteen,” Marcus mumbled, well aware no one was able to hear him over the din. “Not even close to fifteen.”

Come to think of it, how many times _had_ they done it? Not that he was considering answering, but…his brain was running away with him now, and he felt compelled to at least answer it in some capacity. There was the time on his couch, the night before he left, the hotel room (and the morning after), and twice the night of their reunion. Since then, only once.

_Seven. Seven times._

“Quiet!” Abby yelled, seemingly having had enough of the endless speculation. “John, I played this when I was younger. Someone else can take the question if the person who was asked didn’t want to answer, at least in my version.”

A silence so profound it echoed filled the room.

“I guess,” Murphy said. “I think Kane forgot how to talk, anyway.”

Marcus would’ve spoken up to assert his speaking faculties were undamaged, but his tongue wouldn’t seem to move from its position. Nor would breath vacate his lungs, or his vocal chords vibrate.

“So, who’s gonna take Kane’s question?” Murphy asked, grinning. “Preferably Clarke, but I’ll consider other offers.”

“I will,” Abby announced. Astounded, Marcus fixed her with a scowl that he hoped said, “ _what are you doing?”_ and not “ _how dare you!_ ”

Unwilling to allow the chaos to erupt again, Abby gave him a barely-noticeable glance and mouthed a single word: if he hadn’t been staring at her openmouthed, he wouldn’t have seen it.

 _Seven?_ she said, eyebrows slightly quirked along with one corner of her mouth. He flushed, nodded. What was she up to?

He wouldn’t have to wait to find out.

“Less than ten,” she said confidently, her back straight and her voice unwavering, a woman apparently unworried by the fact that his mother was sitting _right next to her_ , “and more than once.”

Whistling. Cheers. High-fives. Blushes, at least from the couple in question. Marcus, overcome with embarrassment, decided it was high time for him to collect plates and begin washing the dishes.

“If you’re done, put your dishes in the sink,” Marcus stood and announced, offering a weak smile to mask his humiliation. Abby looked at him with a question in her eyes, worried she’d gone too far.

She hadn’t. He wasn’t to the point where he could laugh about it yet – not with his mother at the table – but he’d expected this when she’d volunteered to take his question and asked him to confirm her calculation. It was her way of evening the playing field between them and the kids; instead of playing into their glee at seeing them squirm, she’d delivered an answer without fanfare or warning. But at the moment, there was no way to tell her he wasn’t holding her answer against her. He could only hope she’d come to him at some point when the kids had adjourned to the living room again, and he could tell her she hadn’t ruined the evening.

But he couldn’t tell her he wasn’t upset.

He’d long ago promised himself he’d never lie to Abby Griffin, and that would have been a lie.

 

***

 

“What’s wrong?” Vera asked, materializing by his side with a towel in hand.

“It’s nothing,” he deflected. He rinsed the saucepan and handed it to her, desperately trying to avoid meeting her eyes. Being the sole washer and drier of the dishes meant he had time to think – precious quiet solitude – and despite the rush of fondness that always accompanied hearing his mother’s voice, he was in no mood to talk.

“You’re not telling me the truth, Marcus,” Vera said softly. It was more an observation than an accusation: a request for information, not a manipulation tactic. “I don’t mind Abby’s answer, if that’s what you’re worried about. There was no good way to get out of that pickle, and I never expected you to be _saints_.”

Marcus chuckled. “I’m relieved,” he said. “Although I wish we could have kept it private.”

Vera laughed, her shoulders rising in a delicate shrug as she worked on the pile of dripping plates. “She didn’t give them a number. You have some privacy, still.”

“I suppose,” Marcus said, feeling a familiar blush creeping back into his cheeks. This felt eerily similar to having the awkward “birds and bees” talk, and no matter how old one grew, he supposed discussing the topic of sex with one’s parent never grew easier. Thankfully, Vera dropped the subject.

They washed and dried dishes together for a few minutes of buzzing quiet, white noise from the TV drifting their way along with various hushed snippets of conversation. No one seemed to hear them or notice Vera was missing – save for Abby, who he had all but forced to leave him and go watch a movie with the kids. After all the preparation she’d undertaken for the event, he thought she could use a little downtime.

Marcus snuck a glance at his mother when she wasn’t looking, glimpsed her smile as she polished one of Abby’s china plates. At least one of them, he thought, was happy. And Vera deserved it, probably more than any of them did.

“That’s not what’s pestering you,” she said, her tone warm and motherly. “If you want to tell me about it, I’m here. You can tell me anything.”

He knew the truth of her words in his core, knew Vera wouldn’t think his nagging fears were silly and unwarranted. And the promise of privacy comforted him just enough to talk, to bring up things he wasn’t comfortable mentioning to Abby. Not yet.

“I have an interview with Arkadia next week,” he said. “For the principal job.”

“Wonderful!” Vera exclaimed, doing her best to keep her voice in a thrilled whisper. “Marcus, I’m so happy for you!”

He sighed. If only he could be so excited.

“Do you wish you hadn’t applied?” Vera asked, noticing his downcast demeanor.

“No,” he said quickly, firmly. He didn’t regret applying, of that much he was certain. “I think it’s for the best.”

A few seconds of quiet, punctuated only by the splashing of water.

“You don’t want the job, then?” Vera tried again.

“No, mom, I want the job,” he said. Emotions were forming a hurricane in his chest, and if he kept going much longer the storm would start. “I’ve never wanted a job so badly before.”

Without thinking, he turned his head to look at Abby. Sitting in her favorite blue armchair, her smile radiant as she laughed at something Bellamy had said, leaning forward with a carefree grin, she was the most achingly beautiful thing in the room. This night had been for the kids, but in a coincidental way, it had also been for her.

An excuse for her to let go of the final exam-related stress and focus on something else: focus on the things and people who really mattered. She worked so hard to be the best teacher she could, constantly compensating for starting out as a doctor instead of an educator. Perhaps, he thought, tonight would let her see herself as her kids saw her.

“I understand,” Vera said, looking at him with a combination of knowing and consolation. “You don’t want to lose her.”

Marcus started, snapped back to reality, back to his feelings and fears.

“What?” he said, scrubbing a fork until the silver glimmered.

“Abby,” Vera said. “You’re afraid you’ll lose her if you have to leave again.”

“Preposterous,” Marcus said, terrified of admitting she’d hit the bullseye, found the eye at the center of the storm. Because that was exactly it: he felt sick with dread about the interview. Marcus knew he was prepared, knew he had a good chance at the position, but six hours of distance hadn’t done them any favors. Living with her was its own little heaven, but leaving her after the summer would sink him into hell. And even if he drove back to her every weekend, talked to her every night…it wouldn’t be the same.

Distance was a vile enigma, as unpredictable as it was petrifying, and his heart stopped for a moment each time he considered the way things could play out. Less-than-pleasant scenarios that kept him up at night, holding her close, willing the seconds to slow and the sun to stay below the horizon.

“You love her,” Vera said. It wasn’t a question, but he felt compelled to give an answer.

“More than anything.”

He glanced down to face her directly, was surprised to see her wide smile.

“There is no fear in love,” she said, her words a perfect echo of Scripture from his past, “but perfect love drives out fear, for fear has to do with punishment.”

Marcus nodded, lost for words.

“My sweet boy,” she finished with a trembling smile, having concluded her lesson. “There’s no reason for you to worry.”

Swallowing a lump in his throat, Marcus finished scrubbing the last dish and placed it on her side of the sink.

“I know,” he whispered, not trusting his voice to take on the weight of a louder volume.

“Good,” Vera said simply. “Now go to her. I’m fine here.”

“Mom,” he said, already picking up the other towel, “let me help-“

“The two of you,” she said with a firm kindness, “have done quite enough. It’s time you let yourselves relax.”

She stared at him pointedly until he put down the towel, making a noise of surprise when he drew her in for a hug. They had years of hugs to make up for, he knew, and self-forgiveness would come in infrequent, jarring increments. But seeing her happiness tonight at the dinner table, complimenting Abby’s cooking and making small talk with the kids…he wouldn’t have traded it for the world, even if he still held a hollow ache in his chest.

“Let your love for her be enough,” Vera said as they parted, her hands resting on his shoulders, her eyes – of which his were exact copies – brimming with tears.

“I will.” 


	28. Epilogue

Four months later

 “Ms. Griffin?”

Abby stopped shoving class introduction surveys into her bag just long enough to roll her eyes, dropping her chin to her chest to hide a widening smile. Was it too much to ask, she wondered, for her to get out of the school without running into him? Not that she minded – or that any of their colleagues cared – but dammit, he had a _meeting_. A meeting he was now going to be late to, judging by the time on her phone. Why was he here, anyway?

“ _Kane_ , you don’t have to call me that when the kids aren’t around,” she said simply, unable to suppress a laugh when his arms wrapped around her from behind, scratchiness of his beard smoothed by the light brush of his lips on the back of her neck. Just his presence was enough to melt away all the ‘first week of school’ jitters, the softness of his tone sanding down the rough edges of surviving those first five days with a new set of troublemakers.

“You don’t have to call me ‘Kane,’ either,” he said, his tone a mix of contemplative and humorous. Abby knew she ought to be ashamed of herself – they both had things they needed to be doing. She was the president of the science committee this year and had a fair amount of things to plan, but standing with him in the front of her classroom, her hands overlapping his as they rested around her waist, leaning into him…it was a special, self-indulgent kind of addictive.

“Right now, it suits you. You’re making yourself late,” she said, feigning an accusation her smile denied. She removed her hands from his, turned in his arms to face him directly. “I don’t think the school board would approve of a principal who arrives fifteen minutes late to his first meeting.”

“Well,” he said, smirking, “it’s a good thing I have an excuse prepared, then.”

It was all Abby could do not to roll her eyes again. _I’ve spent too much time with this man. Now_ he’s _breaking rules._

“What’s your excuse?” she asked him, unable to resist the pleading in his puppy-wide eyes.

“I needed to see you,” he said, each word ringing with honesty. “It’s unfair that our lunch breaks aren’t at the same time, and I couldn’t wait another second. Perhaps I can ask the board to realign our schedules.”

Warmth spread through her, a gentle tingling brought on by the sincerity of his statement. While she knew it was foolish to complain about something as tiny as the alignment of their lunch breaks – after all, there had been a horrible time when he’d worked six hours away and only been able to see her once a month – there was a nagging irony in the fact that he was a hallway away, but each tile might as well have been an ocean.

Abby opened her mouth to say he’d see her at home, but stopped before the words came out.

“I’m not sure they’ll take that as a valid reason,” she said, checking the clock. They had ten minutes. Ten minutes to enjoy him, to savor being with him in the place they’d met, before his new job stole him away. Ten minutes to convince him to leave her until they got home, if he wanted to keep his new job. “Or that they’d accept your agenda for the realignment of lunch schedules, Principal Kane. I think they’ll see through it.”

She reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, playing absentmindedly with the soft hair at his nape.

“You’re suggesting,” he said, “they won’t think my proposal for holding administration’s lunch hour at eleven instead of noon has to do with solid scientific research?”

She laughed. “I’m suggesting we shouldn’t push our luck,” she said. “Not now. It’s only the first week.”

_And we’re perfectly reasonable adults who don’t need to see each other every day at lunch. Really, we don’t._

Quiet enveloped their embrace for a few moments, interrupted only by the ticking of their time as it whittled down.

“You’re right,” he admitted eventually. “That’s a topic for the November meeting. I’ll start preparing my presentation now.”

“Marcus…” she shook her head, equally adoring and exasperated. He ignored her mild consternation, giving the clock a quick glance. He saw what she knew in her heart to be true: they had less than five minutes now.

“How was your day?” he asked, launching into the “light” version of a conversation they’d have in greater detail that night over a glass of wine, filling in blanks their busy days left in their knowledge of each other’s lives. Friday nights tended to be Clarke’s ‘Lexa night,’ which meant she either closed herself in her room with a Skype connection or, in tonight’s case, would be making the drive to Mount Weather to see her girlfriend.

In any case, they wouldn’t be interrupted. And as much as Abby loved her daughter, she cherished alone time with Marcus whenever it was handed to her.

“It was…” she trailed off with a sigh, leaning into him as memories of the day burst forth from the dam she’d built to keep them in check. “I think Jasper and Monty signed up for Advanced Placement Biology just to make my life difficult.”

“With John gone, they have some big shoes to fill,” Marcus noted with an impish grin, earning him a playful swat on the shoulder as she did her best to appear affronted. “Hey, _someone_ has to do it!”

“You’re taking _their_ side?”

“They did help us, Abby.”

“And we acknowledged that with the dinner.”

“The dinner was months ago. To the kids, it might as well have happened last year.”

“You’re the principal! You should be _disciplining_ them!”

He mumbled something about getting to that later in the semester, which Abby knew damn well was a euphemism for ‘it might or might not happen.’

“Abby,” he said, thoughtful. “If they’re really bothering you, I’ll put a stop to it. Just send them down to me next time they do something insulting. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

She took a moment to think it over, remembering the thinly-veiled suggestive comments she’d endured throughout the week once they’d learned Marcus Kane was their new principal. Was it an annoyance? Absolutely. Was it anything she hadn’t expected when she saw – much to her dismay – their names listed on her roster? Absolutely not. Was it anything she couldn’t handle? Absolutely not.

And while the thought of Marcus Kane, a man softer than a teddy bear and twice as cuddly, trying to set Jasper and Monty straight was amusing…it wasn’t likely to be any more effective than what she could do on her own.

“It’s fine,” she said with a nod, decisive. “If it gets worse, I’ll send them your way.”

“All right,” he answered, satisfied with her answer.

A dopey, wide grin spread across his lips and his cheeks reddened. Suddenly, abruptly, he broke eye contact.

“What?” Abby asked. His smile was catching, and the question came out half-giggle, half-concerned.

“I could always call _you_ down to the principal’s office,” he mumbled, his lips barely parting over the barely-uttered words. Abby felt herself beginning to flush, certain he’d intended her to discover a double meaning behind his all-too-innocent statement.

Usually she prided herself on keeping her cool in such situations – the rhythm of the relationship tended to fall on her making innuendoes and Marcus turning tomato-red – but this wasn’t the first time he’d surprised her. Somehow, she thought with a hint of embarrassment, he’d found out about her classroom-related fantasies. Or maybe he’d always known, considering their brief night on David Miller’s couch had been the source of them.

One thing was certain: two could play at this game.

“Well, I’d have to do something to be sent there,” she said, glancing down at his lips and up to his sparkling eyes with a self-satisfied smirk. They couldn’t do anything now, of course – not with his meeting barreling down on them like a winter storm – but at the very least she could get him hot and bothered enough to tackle her the second he walked through the door.

Abby stepped forward until his back collided against her dry-erase board, leaned in so her lips brushed his. Although they didn’t see each other as much as either of them would have liked, distance hadn’t dulled the shimmer of moments like this. Of hearing his breath catch as her hands wandered up his chest and into his luscious locks, his fingers pinpricks of heat as he slipped them beneath her thin sweater to stroke the skin at the small of her back. If anything, the lack of time they spent together made moments like this all the more transfixing, intoxicating, boiling down each of their senses and pouring them into each other.

The moment their lips met, she knew it had been idiotic to think she could restrain herself until he came home. They collided with an explosiveness only the far-away closeness of the week could have provided, a biting, desperate urgency that seeped through in her sighs and the shiver that ran down her spine. Already lost to him (and admittedly, a little lightheaded from the scent of dry-erase markers) she traced her tongue along his lower lip and smiled as he allowed her entry.

His typical taste was sweetened with a hint of chocolate, a faint whisper of caramel that sent electricity coursing from her tongue to her toes, and Abby couldn’t restrain a smile. It wasn’t all bad, she thought, to be principal.

“You found the chocolate jar,” she remarked between kisses, his responding laugh a rumble against her chest.

“The secretaries keep it filled,” he murmured, “and you know how I feel about Milky Ways.”

Abby pulled away to rest her forehead on his, the pull of reality barely stronger than the magnetism drawing them together. His meeting would start in less than three minutes, and logic informed her he shouldn’t be arriving with kiss-reddened lips; _that_ was an impression on the board he didn’t want to make, even if many of the members already knew what was between the two of them. Given their history, Abby wasn’t inclined to tempt fate.

As if on cue, the hand that had wound itself firmly into her hair began beeping. The moment was effectively shattered by the shrill intrusion, and with one last brief brush of lips, Marcus slowly moved his hands to his sides.

“I should probably-“ he started, dropping the sentence when he noticed her expression. “What?”

“You should probably fix your hair before you go,” she said, reaching up to comb through it as best she could, making every effort to set the awry strands back into place. “It’s not…bad, but it could probably be better. Considering it’s your first board meeting.”

This resulted in thirty seconds of frantic, comb-less hair brushing in which Abby took one side of his part and Marcus took the other. By the time they were finished it almost appeared as though he’d slicked his brown waves down with gel, any and all natural volume having yielded to the force of their fingers.

“How do I look?” Marcus asked, and Abby bit her lip.

“You’ll be fine,” she said, cheeks burning. As much as she missed him, a little restraint would’ve saved him the embarrassment that certainly lay in wait in the conference room. “I don’t think it’ll be a long meeting, if it’s only the first.”

“That bad?”

“From now on, I’ll carry a hairbrush in my purse.”

Marcus gave her a long look of unfettered devotion that smoothed the edges of her guilt; somehow tranquil despite the fact that his hair was flatter than the crepes he’d once made her for breakfast.

“Abby Griffin,” he said, voice shouldering his amusement and a hint of playful consternation, “ _this_ is enough to get you sent to the principal’s office.”

She beamed, turned away to gather her things and head home for the weekend. They’d driven separately today given his after-school engagements, and the next hour and a half would feel like years without him or Clarke at home.

“Monday after school, then?” she asked, ushering him out of her classroom, turning off the light, and closing the door behind them. It shut with a quiet click, a sound not dissimilar to the echoing of her heels on the stone floor.

“Monday after school,” he affirmed, brown eyes churning with delight and mischief. “Be on your best behavior until then.”

“We’re going to have the house to ourselves tonight, Marcus,” she said, returning his impish expression with her hand resting on the door to the outside world. It was impossible not to laugh at him when he looked like this; hair devoid of any volume, eyes wide with the realization of her intent, lips still glowing from their brief indulgence. She couldn’t resist one last comment as she turned to leave, well aware he’d speed the meeting along if he thought he had good reason.

“The good behavior starts tomorrow.”

 

***

 

Or maybe the good behavior would start _tonight_.

The grandfather clock chimed eight times over the white noise of the TV, drowning out the idle chattering of the reality show Abby had busied herself with while she waited for Marcus to get home. She considered making dinner before remembering Friday night was “carryout night” – also known as the night Clarke chose whatever she wanted that wasn’t home cooked – and Abby figured Marcus would continue the tradition even when her daughter wasn’t around.

He was always nagging her to try new things, foods she’d never heard of, pushing her further and further out of her comfort zone with exotic spices and dishes. Part of her had been looking forward to what tonight would bring; what zany thing he’d look up on their computer and get ridiculously excited about, forcing them to drive across town and waste precious hours of their treasured alone time.

Now she’d begun to doubt tonight would bring anything at all.

At 5:00, she’d still been able to explain it. She thought maybe the board took Marcus out to dinner, intent on congratulating him. That was fine. Her taste buds were perfectly content with soup and a salad from their local market, and if she hurried she’d be able to make her way there before they closed for the night. So she waited patiently for a text from him, a message to let her know plans had changed.

Nothing came.

Clarke called to let her know she’d made it safely to Mount Weather, and Abby could breathe easily for a few hours. Despite the fact that a year and a half had passed since Jake, her stomach still coiled when someone she loved stepped into a car. Rationally, she knew there was quite little about which to be worried – Clarke was an excellent driver and had earned a perfect score on her drivers’ test – but irrationally, her father had been a good driver, too. The call, then, was quite a relief.

This soothed her nerves for a period of time, until six o’clock came and went with no word from Marcus. ‘Unusual’ didn’t even begin to cover his lack of communication tonight. Typically he didn’t step one foot outside the door without telling her exactly where he was going, when she could expect him to come back, or asking her if she wanted to come along. She’d never be able to prove it, but she thought he knew something of her trepidations where cars and her family were involved. Thus, he tried to soothe her worries by keeping her as informed as possible, making sure she knew she had nothing about which to be concerned.

They’d spent the better part of the summer together, after all: sitting outside beneath the shade of the huge oak tree in their backyard, Marcus with his crossword puzzles and Abby with her magazines, sleeping in together when Clarke went away to camp and waking each other up with lazy, soft kisses, cooking Clarke’s favorite meals together and making visits to Vera’s as a family. Marcus would often read some of his favorite books aloud to Abby when they lay in bed at night – childish, she knew, but she loved the sound of his voice – and nothing gave her sweeter dreams than falling asleep to his faint accent, her head on his chest, snuggled close enough to him to melt into one being.

Seven o’clock chimed its unfeeling refrain, and Abby turned on the TV to distract herself. The meeting should have been over hours ago, and even dinner at an upscale restaurant would have long ended. Despite her best efforts to remain level-headed and calm, her mind had grabbed her hand and begun the steady process of running away with her rationality.

Where was he? Why hadn’t he come home yet? Why hadn’t he texted her? For God’s sake, the last time someone had been gone _this_ long with no explanation it had been Jake, and Marcus _had_ to know that, and-

She swallowed hard over an aching lump in her throat and stared at the mindless reality program, waiting until her thoughts and vision blurred.

Vera called at seven-thirty and asked to talk to Marcus. Marcus wasn’t home. Vera talked to Abby for a half-hour anyway, asked if they could come over to see her this weekend (she didn’t mind that Clarke had gone to visit Lexa). Abby said she didn’t see why Marcus wouldn’t approve and answered for him, offered to take her out to dinner on Saturday night.

Vera told her to give Marcus her love when he came home.

Abby just hoped he would _come_ home.

When nine o’clock announced its presence, Abby decided she had had quite enough. Her fingers flew before her mind could work, and she sent the thing she’d promised herself she wasn’t clingy enough to send. But at this point, she wasn’t even sure it qualified as ‘clingy’ – it more qualified as ‘concerned for his well-being’, in her book.

**Where are you?**

Five agonizing minutes passed before her phone buzzed.

 **My car broke down,** he’d written, and that tight knot in her stomach came unclenched. **I’ve been trying to fix it. No luck. Can you pick me up?**

Abby bit her lip – _hard_ – and rolled her eyes. Relief crashed over her like a tidal wave and left annoyance in its wake, an unsteady mix of emotions she wasn’t sure how to process. This was their night, and she didn’t want to spend it arguing. But…he couldn’t have managed a simple text? Not an easy, ‘something’s wrong with my car. Abby, can you come help?’

 **I’m on my way,** she sent, scowling. **I’ll be there in ten minutes.**

Every light was on inside the school when she arrived, which should have struck her as incredibly odd given that the lights were on a timer. Unless there was a football game, all the lights in the building turned off at precisely 5 o’clock. But Abby was too upset to notice the yellow glow emanating from her workplace, pulling into the parking lot next to his Audi with a clenched jaw and white knuckles.

**I’m here.**

A response came almost immediately.

**Can you come inside? I forgot to fill up the car this morning and stayed in the building to keep warm. I’m so sorry. I know how inconvenient this is for you.**

Slamming her car door, Abby couldn’t help musing on how none of this had to do with ‘inconvenience.’ It was his lack of communication that made her hands shake, fortified steel in her gaze. How could he do this to her, knowing everything she’d been through with Jake?

Abby might not have noticed the lights were on, but she certainly noticed when they turned _off_. And as she walked toward the building, the dark pavement bathed in flickering yellow from the humming overhead lights of the parking lot, she took note when things suddenly grew darker.

And just like that, her anger seemed less potent.

**What was that?**

Again, an instant response.

**Timer?**

Abby began walking faster, minimizing the distance between herself, the building, and Marcus Kane. Whatever was going on in the school was probably unimportant – an electrical failure, maybe – but whatever it was, she wanted to get him out of it. The rest of her various qualms could be dealt with tomorrow before dinner.

**Please come to the back of the building. I don’t want to walk around the school trying to find you.**

No response.

Her fingers were clenched around the metal handle now, and Abby felt a scream building up inside her lungs. Of course, of _course_ when she asked him to do something he wouldn’t respond. And if this door wasn’t open – which it probably wasn’t – she’d have to walk all the way around the school to go through the main entrance.

And if that wasn’t open, Marcus Kane would be spending the night at Arkadia High School. Part of her thought he might deserve to, as worried about him as she’d been. _That’ll teach him to try to fix his car without telling me where the hell he is._

Expecting the door to stand firm, she yanked with more force than was necessary. The door yielded to her instantly and she nearly fell, a yelp escaping her lips as she backpedaled. After taking a few moments to regain her balance, she stepped inside…and frowned.

But this wasn’t a frown of anger. It shared no DNA with the one she’d worn for all ten minutes it took to reach Arkadia from her home. This was a frown of confusion, contemplation, curiosity.

Because the lights were off, and it should have been dark. It should have been utter blackness in the halls of the high school, a void only offset by the red glow of emergency exit signs. Instead the corridor was lit with a dim, uneven warmth, a light she knew could only come from…

_Candles._

She looked down to find dozens of them lining the hallway on both sides, mere inches from the beige-painted lockers, nestled in elaborately carved metal trays to prevent dripping wax from sticking to the floor. So absorbed was she with the flickering lights that she almost overlooked the rose petals that scattered the well-worn tiles with flecks of bright red, tiny medallions of burgundy that fluttered around her ankles as she stepped forward, hiding her trembling lips with a hand over her mouth.

There was no doubt in her mind that this – whatever it was – was exactly why Marcus Kane hadn’t come home after his meeting. Abby almost felt foolish for her anger now that she knew how wildly misdirected it had been: she hadn’t just not hit the target, she’d fired in the complete opposite direction. It should have been obvious, she mused as she looked around, absorbing the dreamlike beauty in the path before her.

There weren’t many men who could manage to turn their decades-old high school into something out of a fairy tale, but somehow, Marcus had managed. Between the glowing lights, glimmering and gleaming against the darkness of night, and the air, singed with the sweetness of roses and muted by wisps of grey smoke, the whole place had the appearance of an enchanted forest. It felt as though anything could happen, as though she’d stepped into a realm of infinite possibility and wonder. A world Marcus Kane made for her.

She had thought she couldn’t possibly love him more than she already did. That the glass in her heart with his name had already been long filled to the brim. She hadn’t counted on it to overflow.

Overwhelmed by her surroundings, it took her an embarrassing amount of time to figure out what to do next. Her mind belonged to a thousand different topics at once, her thoughts ricocheting between elation (how did he manage to keep these plans from her? How did he have time to set all this up by himself? How had she managed to find a man who would go to crazy, above-and-beyond lengths just to see her smile?) and nervousness (she was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting henley, so if he had anything fancy planned, she hoped he’d had the foresight to steal one of her dresses).

Then, once she’d managed to calm the rapid pounding of her heart down to a reasonable tempo, she realized the candles weren’t just laying on the ground for added aesthetic beauty: they were leading her somewhere.

Given that they started a path on either side of the door where she entered and continued to the left, Abby – making a reasonable, educated hypothesis – decided to follow them down the corridor and see where she ended up. As soon as she took her first step, the hallway began glowing from more than just candlelight: she found strings of lights had been hung from the rafters on the ceiling, apparently timed to turn on when she walked past. At any given moment she stood under an archway of brilliance, framed by candlelight and standing on roses.

She could hardly breathe.

Finding a good tempo proved as difficult as soothing her rapid heartbeat and shallow breathing, and it was all she could do to keep an even pace. Running would get her to him so much _faster_. Her desire to see him poured into her veins, igniting a fire throughout her body, flooding her with warmth when she imagined him standing at the end of the candlelit path.

But he’d taken so much time to perfect each detail. God only knew how long he’d been planning this. The least she could do to repay him was take her time, allow him to savor the fruition of the beautiful setting he’d grown. And there was something to be said for allowing herself to savor this, too. To commit each detail to memory, to sketch each component in her mind’s eye. This was a story she knew she’d be telling for years to come, and she felt obliged to make sure her words did it justice.

Her footsteps echoed softly in the hall as she followed the candles and petals, swallowing her tears for the right moment. Yet she thought something about her journey felt oddly familiar, as though she’d made this trek before. As though her feet were falling within lines on the floor made by her shoes, long ago. As if…

The tears started forming again halfway down the second hallway, when she realized where the candles stopped.

“ _Marcus_ ,” she breathed, capable of only an incredulous whisper.

She was outside the door in less than a minute, abandoning all pretense of propriety in favor of seeing him again. And when she pulled open the door to David Miller’s classroom – a room that, in contrast to their earlier escapades, had now been set alight with the same glowing candles that had marked her journey there – she was all but ready to throw herself into his arms.

Because he had taken all the scandal out of their first memory together, replacing it with a beautiful innocence and pure, resonant love. It had been the memory that ruined them and kept them together, a memory that marked beginnings, endings, and a blissful middle. It had, and always would be, a memory that marked the first time she kissed Marcus Kane. A tingling sensation ran through her at the sight of him in the front of the classroom, standing at the same podium behind which he’d delivered his piece to her all those months ago. His features, softened by the glowing light, lit like a firework when he saw her standing in the doorway.

Completely clueless as to what he was planning, Abby couldn’t help thinking it was taking every inch of his restraint not to run to her, too. But this had been a carefully-orchestrated endeavor, and he wouldn’t have been the Marcus Kane she loved if he broke down and swept her into his arms now. The time for that, she assumed, was coming later. Along with the time for joyful tears.

“Abby,” he said, his words tumbling out in a nervous whisper. “Would you like to sit down?”

And there it was, exactly where they’d left it: David Miller’s blue velvet couch. No one had bothered to move it since the rumors of their scandal had never been confirmed, and now, thanks to the kids, it never would be. That couch had survived just as much as their relationship had, and gotten less credit for it. Maybe after tonight, she’d be able to convince David to sell it to them for the right price...if she could come up with a suitable excuse as to her interest in the furniture in his classroom.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was already shaking, as were her hands, as were her legs. It was as though the atmosphere in the room was infused with caffeine, jolting every muscle in her body, electrifying her in his presence.

She crossed the room in a few seconds, feet falling on roses, her gaze connected with his as she sat in the same spot she’d occupied on their drunken night of revelations.

“Abby Griffin,” he started, eyes sparkling. “When we were here last, I knew a sum of two things about you: you taught in the room across the hall from mine, and you had the unique capability of getting under my skin in a way no one else could. It wasn’t until I stood up here-“ he paused, gesturing to the podium, “that alcohol gave me the answer to a question I hadn’t been asking. Why was I so infuriated with you? Why couldn’t I back away and leave you to your tardiness?”

She laughed, remembering how he used to take her lateness as a personal affront. Now, those memories seemed to belong to different people – people who were mere shades of the beings they were now.

“It had always been obvious I felt _something_ for you. A sentiment that didn’t evaporate when the alcohol wore off. And when sobriety came for me the next morning, those emotions stayed. I loved you, even then. But I was awful at showing it. I was convinced I never deserved it. Yet one thing I knew for certain: when I told you I’d always catch you, I meant it.”

Abby sat on her hands to keep them from shaking, felt sweat forming across her skin from the effort of holding back her tears. The candles and the lights and the rose petals had been beautiful enough, but this – the gift of his words – was the present she’d cherish long after the wax had melted and the petals withered.

“What I hadn’t counted on was all the ways you’d catch me. All the lessons you’d teach me. From that first moment onward, I learned from you. And you taught me that love wasn’t just a complicated emotion to shut down and hide from – it was a choice. A decision to choose one person over any and every circumstance, to elevate them higher than hardship. And although it wasn’t always easy, you showed me it was worth it. That in the end, love is always the right choice.

“Even for an English teacher, it’s difficult to find words powerful enough to convey what you mean to me. Abby, you’re my hope, my light, my salvation. God knows you don’t need to be caught – yet another thing you taught me, you’re perfectly capable of catching yourself – but as long as you’ll have me, I want to be there with arms outstretched. Just in case.”

He stepped down from the podium and her legs moved of their own accord, carrying her toward him as they met in the open space between couch and platform. His eyes shone in the golden light as hers glimmered with freshly-fallen tears, both outlined in halos of candlelight.

Reaching into his pocket for a tiny blue box, Marcus Kane dropped down to one knee and stared up at her with that same expression he’d worn months ago, the expression of a man who’d found himself by standing at her side. In that moment, nothing existed but him – not the candles, not the rose petals, not the velvet couch. It was only Abby and Marcus, two teachers who had taught each other more than they’d ever find in a textbook.

She knew what he was going to say. She’d had an answer for months, since the night after their prom. But that didn’t stop her breath from freezing in her lungs at the sight of him, from giving a tiny little gasp at finally hearing those seven simple words.

“Abigail Anne Griffin,” he said, opening the box to reveal a simple silver band with a sparkling diamond in the center. “Will you marry me?”

Her answer came as soon as the words left his lips, falling in time with tears down her cheeks.

“Yes,” she said, smiling and crying and dizzy all at once. There was a difference between considering the probability of him saying it and hearing the words, and the realization that he’d asked the question – that he really wanted this, this thing between them that her breathless and was the very air she breathed – was too overwhelming to allow her emotions to remain in check.

She took his face in her hands, her voice trembling more and more with each repetition of that one-syllable word that offered a lifetime of happiness. “Yes! Yes. Yes.”

He breathed a brief sigh of relief – had he really thought there was even the slightest chance of her refusing him? – and gave a weightless, joyful laugh, scooping her up in his arms and spinning her in a circle. It was a tiny moment that lasted no longer than ten seconds, but in his arms Abby felt as though she could touch the stars. Or rather, she almost felt as though she were one herself; glowing, radiant, aflame with the infinite possibility of a life spent with the man she loved.

Marcus slid the engagement ring onto her finger, a scintillating, perfect fit. And when he angled his head to kiss her in the wavering candlelight she drew him even closer, waiting to wake up from what still felt like a beautiful dream.

Their lips met, applause erupted, and Abby started in his arms at the sudden sound.

“Oh,” he murmured against her mouth, his breath radiating heat across her lips and cheeks. “I forgot to mention I had help.”

Abby grinned, a laugh bubbling up from deep inside her full heart. She didn’t need to turn away from him to know who ‘the help’ had been.

And as cheering surrounded them like the yellow glow of moonlight through the windows, she pulled him down to her again. Out of the corner of her eye she could see them all – Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia, Jasper, Monty, Nathan, and a returned-from-college John Murphy – standing in the doorway. Her daughter was wiping her eyes, Bellamy was smiling, Octavia was barely holding her lower lip steady, Jasper and Monty exchanged their signature high-five, and Nathan and John whistled and cheered.

As much as he credited her with teaching him, he wasn’t the only one who had learned a few lessons over the course of the past nine months. Marcus Kane had taught her love wasn’t a shooting star, a flash of brilliance that came once and never returned. Instead it was the moon; bright, steadfast, waning and waxing and constantly glowing.

They broke apart slowly, savoring each other, unwilling to let go for even the slightest of seconds. But their visitors awaited, and there would be plenty of time to return to this moment later. They had years ahead of them with every ounce of drama and heartache left in the dust.

So, with one more look at the shimmering stone on her finger that promised their love an eternal flame, she wove her fingers through his and moved to meet their guests. They collided in celebration in the hallway, a whirlwind of congratulations and embraces and tears. For a brief moment with Clarke in her arms, a fractional eye in the joyful storm, she managed to catch her fiancé’s eye.

He smiled his dazzling smile, as far lost in the bliss of the moment as she was. And although she knew there would always be lessons to learn, she was confident they’d vanquished the biggest one of all. They’d found the universal solution that fit each and every problem.

_Love._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this somehow reaches 500 kudos, I'll explode and melt into a sobbing puddle of Kabby trash. :P
> 
> Anyway, since this is the end, I want to sincerely thank everyone who's read and enjoyed the fic enough to make it this far. Thank you for your comments and kudos, your support, your inbox messages, and your continued kindness. This story was never meant to go longer than 3,000 words, but thanks to your encouragement it became a 28-chapter full length piece. I love this fandom from the bottom of my heart, and I love everyone in it. I know we say it all the time, but I feel it's true - the Kabby fandom is one big family. I genuinely mean it: thank you for reading. :') *wipes away tears*
> 
> And now, on to my Hunger Games AU.


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